Helmholtz working group on MCDA for Sustainability Assessment
Welcome to the Helmholtz Working Group on MCDA for Sustainability Assessment. Our mission is to advance the use of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) for supporting the transformation of energy systems. We provide a collaborative platform for researchers, fostering the development and dissemination of methods and approaches in MCDA sustainability assessment.
Selecting a suitable seasonal thermal storage technology (STES) is often a complex challenge. In order to support decision-makers in finding a well-founded solution, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences, in close cooperation with the ITAS at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, is organizing two multi-criteria decision analysis workshops in Zurich and Bern. The aim of the workshops is to create a well-founded decision-making basis by weighing technical, economic, ecological and social criteria and to identify a technology that meets the specific requirements.
The Sustainability Theatre – From Lab to Market and Society is collaborative effort between MCDA Helmholtz and TwinVector.
This innovative initiative, led by KIT in partnership with the Tomas Bata University in Zlín, will bring together a transdisciplinary group of researchers for a moderated, IT- and model-supported discussion to chart a pathway of emerging Li-ion batteries from laboratory innovation to market integration and societal impact. With Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) as the guiding framework, the event will feature:
- Expert insights on LCSA (Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment)
- A use-case exploration of batteries, incorporating LCA and Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis with diverse stakeholders
- Discussions to address goals, challenges, and implementation strategies for life cycle perspective methods, enabling capacity building.
On 19 November, the 3rd StoRIES Workshop took place in Brussels, focusing on "Sustainable Hybrid Energy Storage for the European Clean Energy Transition". This workshop builds up on the results gathered in last years workshop in Vienna. The aim is to consolidate key performance indicators (KPI), weighting sets and experiment with their application on real use cases using innovative sustainability business canvas.
This year's Helmholtz MCDA Workshop, "MCDA for Energy System Transformation", organized by the Helmholtz Working Group on MCDA, took place at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) October 22-23. On Day 1, we focused on the challenges and opportunities of stakeholder’s integration in MCDA, enriched by outstanding presentations from external experts. Day 2 was dedicated to internal discussions on Strengths and Weaknesses of Helmholtz MCDA Studies and collaborative planning for future joint activities of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Forschungszentrum Jülich, and Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon in the field of MCDA for sustainability assessment.
More informationMembers of the Helmholtz Working Group on MCDA from the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) participated in the 98th Meeting of the European Working Group (EWG) on Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA), held at the University of Catania on September 26-27, 2024. The KIT-ITAS team presented their review of MCDA software for sustainability assessment. This review is a collaborative project with Dr. Marco Cinelli from Leiden University.
More informationMembers of KIT-ITAS presented their joint research with Forschungszentrum Jülich on stakeholders integration into multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) for assessing the sustainability of energy technologies at OR 2024, the International Conference on Operations Research, hosted by the TUM School of Management at the Technical University of Munich. The presentation was part of the session titled “Multi-Criteria, Multi-Objective Decision-Support in Energy and Sustainability,” which featured researchers from institutions such as Ruhr University Bochum, Paul Scherrer Institute, and University Duisburg-Essen.
More informationThe “Interactive Workshop: Setting-up a common base for sustainability assessment to unlock the potential applications for hybrid energy storage systems” was held on the 6th of December 2023 in Vienna. The event was organized in the frame of WP4: ‘Supporting the transition towards a climate neutral continent’ of the StoRIES project. During this workshop, the Helmholtz MCDA Tool (HELDA) and the plugin for stakeholders integration was introduced and used for the very first time in a real use case. With the software, the stakeholders were able to interact with a pre-defined multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) model for sustainability assessment of energy storage technologies.
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