Quantifying Sustainability for Industry

Sustainable development is now being recognised as avital component of our society in the environmental,ethical, social, technological, economic, andinstitutional dimensions, but what is missing is aframework to quantitatively measure sustainability.This thesis is distinctive in that it focuses onquantitative methods encapsulated in a formalassessment procedure and that it includessustainability concepts that have rarely been putinto practical use in sustainability reports. A configuration of the tools from Total QualityManagement (TQM) is adapted to identifysustainability indicators which are then mapped ontoa scalar with mathematical functions and thesustainability indices are presented on differentlevels of details according to the need of differentstakeholders. To fully demonstrate the potential ofthe methodology, the author has chosen to test it onthe electricity sector of New Zealand.This methodology is a tool to analyze the complexinteractions of decision makings and will be valuableto policy makers and sustainability professionals whocan make use of it to test the overall effects of apolicy change before it is implemented.... Mehr