Non-radioactive emissions and costs evaluation for categories of IPPC activities using analytic hierarchy process

The paper presents a method to define solutions in order to classify sustainability of different industrial plants. The basic of the proposed approach consists in defining a Multi Criteria Decision Making Approach (MCDM) able to cope with a general set of sustainability indicators. Integrated Pollution and Prevention Control (IPPC) is the strategy individuated from European Union to reduce pollution of industrial sites which have high environmental impact. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the sustainability of 6 categories of IPPC activities, located in Apulia (Italy). As consequence, the authors have developed an Analytic Hierarchy Process-based approach (AHP) to manage set of indicators of the type lees is better. The AHP hierarchy framework is based on four levels: the 6 IPPC categories are assessed against non-radioactive emissions and cost (criteria). The study evaluates the sustainability of categories of IPPC activities considering five different types of non-radioactive pollutants representing the sub-criteria at the third level of hierarchy. The authors have developed a sensibility analysis in order to evaluate how changing of incoming data affects final results. Further improvements can be defined on the proposed approach.