Development of a quantitative model for decision making in sustainable development (SD)

Sustainable Development (SD) addresses the challenges by meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the needs of future generations. Due to the changing nature and the increasing complexity of the modern economy, the consequences of future developments and interventions by governments are generally difficult to perceive and to incorporate into policy making. A framework has been proposed in this paper to consider economic, social, environmental aspects and quality of life. Many of the decision variables are qualitative and subjective. Researchers agree that it is important to quantify these variables for policy decisions in areas such as, the Energy Trading Scheme (ETS), economic and social challenges. A quantitative model is proposed to integrate these issues in a meaningful way for helping decision makers to take short-medium-long term decisions on SD covering the entire value stream.