A TOPSIS multi-criteria multi-period approach for selecting projects in sustainable development context

Project selection in sustainable development context is one of the major concerns of governmental departments whose are seeking to develop best approaches and innovative methods to deal with such complex decision-making problem. This work is concerned with sustainable project selection, which must guarantee a long-term balance between the integrity of the environment, the social equality and the economic efficiency and must evaluate projects in the short, medium and long term horizons. This paper first provides a state-of-the-art survey on sustainable project selection. The review confirms the topic relevance since the multi-period aspect is missing in previous publications. Secondly, it proposes a novel multi-criteria multi-period approach based on TOPSIS, for selecting projects under sustainable development context. The proposed approach is then applied for choosing the best compromised sustainable forest management options, considering simultaneously the economic benefits, the environmental impacts and the decision-maker preferences.