Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship

Objective

There is a pressing need for information regarding the comprehensive (e.g., sustainability, resilience, technical) performance of materials and technologies in an easily understandable format, being a quality score, a preference class, or a ranking. Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA) is an excellent approach to achieve these goals as it provides a process that leads the assessments by identifying the evaluation criteria, eliciting the preferences of the stakeholders and aggregating the information to provide a comprehensive evaluation for each target alternative. 

The objective of this Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (MSCF) is to develop a map of the features that characterize materials and technologies (i.e., alternatives) assessment and provide a set of guidelines for researchers and practitioners interested in conducting a comprehensive assessment of these alternatives.

This MSCF consists of 23 months at (i) the Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response (formerly National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL)) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati, USA and 6 months at (ii) the Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen PSI, Switzerland. In these locations expertise in materials and technologies assessment will be gathered and contextualized. After this period, the return to (iii) the Institute of Computing Science at Poznan University of Technology, Poland will be instrumental in building on the expertise acquired to finalize the guidelines in a framework and to disseminate findings to several stakeholders.

Inspired by the findings of this MSCF and striving to maximise the impact of the research outcomes, I am planning to organise public engagement activities, to publish papers in highly ranked peer-review journals and newsletters intended for the public, which will benefit environmental researchers, decision scientists and policy makers interested in comprehensive assessments of materials and technologies. 

Research outcomes

Outreach

Summary

Project title: Sustainability Assessment based on Decision Aiding (SAbDA)

Principal Investigator: Dr. Marco Cinelli

Advisors: Professor Roman Słowiński, Dr. Michael Gonzalez, Dr. Peter Burgherr, Assistant Professor Miłosz Kadziński 

Beneficiary & Host Organization: Institute of Computing Science, Poznań University of Technology

Project administrator: Joanna Buszkiewicz

Partner Organizations: 

(i) Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response (formerly National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL)) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati

(ii) Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen PSI, Switzerland

Timeline: 36 months in total. Started in September 2018

• 23 months (September 2018 - July 2020) as a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati

• 6 months (September 2020 - February 2021)  as a Visiting Fellow at the Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen PSI, Switzerland

• 7 months (March 2021 - September 2021) at the Laboratory of Intelligent Decision Support Systems, Institute of Computing Science, Poznań University of Technology, Poland