Quantitative indicators of social sustainability and determination of their interdependencies. Example analysis for a wastewater treatment plant

Abstract

Social impact as growing concern is becoming an important aspect of the design and operation of wastewater treatment processes. A need has arisen for the development of quantitative indicators of social sustainability. Design and operation of wastewater treatment processes additionally require simple and effective methods to represent and understand the interconnections between the indicators of social sustainability. This paper presents an approach for the development of quantitative social sustainability indicators, and introduces a novel method for defining and visualizing indicator interdependence. It outlines equations for quantitative evaluation of health, safety and security, and comfort. Weighting method of the bipartite network of the relations between the indicators and stakehold-ers enables clear visualization of the interdependencies of the indicators and facilitates simplification of the set of social sustainability criteria. It creates a basis for reduction of amount of data needed for performing the analysis and reducing the social sustainability assessment’s costs.