Designing municipal waste management programs using choosing by advantages and design structure matrix

Abstract

Designing public environmental policies is not an easy task. Decision makers must consider multiple social, environmental and economic aspects in order to achieve sustainable solutions. They must also manage interrelated information and preferences of different stakeholders to ensure that the policy suits the community and accomplishes its goals. This research study focused on analyzing the design process of environmental public policies using the Choosing by Advantages (CBA) decision system integrated with Design Structure Matrix (DSM) to make complex decisions. A case study involving the redesign of a waste collection program was conducted, where three complex decisions were made using the CBA method. Researchers proposed using DSM to decrease negative iterations by finding the optimal order of decisions. Using DSM helped to decrease the number of iteration loops, and document the assumptions to make the process more transparent. Future work should measure the impacts of using CBA together with DSM to make decisions in the formulation process of public environmental policies.