Ranking Canadian universities: a quantitative approach for sustainability assessment using uD-SiM

Abstract

This paper introduces a model that enables a comparison between universities based on sustainability indicators related to environmental, economic, social and educational aspects. The proposed model is based on a driving force-pressure-state-exposure-effect-action (DPSEEA) framework and is called uncertainty-based DPSEEA-Sustainability index Model (uD-SiM). The uD-SiM applies the concept of causality and develops sustainability index (SI), which is an outcome of nonlinear relationships of sustainability indicators in different stages of DPSEEA. In this paper, this fuzzy-based multi-criteria decision-making model is used to evaluate the sustainability of five Canadian universities, namely the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, the University of Alberta, the McGill University and the Memorial University. The final ranking results are compared with the Green report card ranking for 2010 through SI. The application of various actions and strategies that can be applied to different stages of the framework to improve sustainability in higher education institutions is also discussed.

Keywords:

• sustainability
• university ranking
• uncertainty
• driving force-pressure-state-effect-exposure-action (DPSEEA)
• decision making
• sustainability index (SI)

Acknowledgements

The authors thankfully acknowledge the financial support provided by NSERC under the Discovery Grant Program. The authors also greatly appreciate the help of Dr Rehan Sadiq for his technical advice and support in the development and application of uD-SiM.

Notes

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