The use of the Analytic Network Process for the sustainability assessment of an urban transformation project

Environmental problems and the principles of sustainable development in projects and planning processes have become increasingly important over the last years. In this sense, the feasibility studies should involve not only the technical elements and the social-economic aspects but also the factors related to the interferences of the operation with the environmental components. This means that sustainability assessment can be considered as a complex decisions system with several elements that have to be taken into account. Speaking about complex decisions, the multi-criteria techniques provide a useful support in the choice among several alternatives with different objectives and criteria and allow one to include in the evaluation all the factors, tangible and intangible, related to the specific problem. Particularly, the Analytic Network Process (ANP) is a multi-criteria theory of measurement used to derive relative priority scales of absolute numbers from individual judgments. The ANP offers a general framework to deal with complex decisions which provides a comparison of the different options. The object of the work is the sustainability assessment of an urban transformation project in Italy. Through the use of the ANP, the analysis will put in evidence the most important elements for the evaluation of the process and their reciprocal influence, with particular reference to the environmental aspects.