A Sensitivity Index to Perform the Territorial Sustainability in Uncertain Decision-Making Conditions

Abstract

The issue of sustainability is central to development strategies. Although this alignment is acknowledged and shared world-wide, territorial development in a sustainable light must also take the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic into consideration, specifically by evaluating the effects of COVID-19 on the global health, social order, and economic-environmental system. The research suggests a sensitivity index to gauge the degree of territorial sustainability taking the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts into account. A study set of countries, as identified by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is used to test the developed index. The index evaluates a country’s performance in terms of economic, social, and environmental sustainability while also considering the relative risk of COVID-19. The proposed index measures territorial sustainability from a variety of angles by enabling comparisons between the circumstances before and after current shocks in the socioeconomic and environmental performance frames by pandemic emergency. The index was created using an integrated assessment method that was based on the Choquet Integral (CI) mathematical framework and Multi-Attributive Ideal-Real Comparative Analysis (MAIRCA). The study establishes a unique and up-scaling methodology for constructing the sensitivity index, significantly advancing the suggestions for sustainable accounting under uncertain circumstances at the territorial scale. Adopting indices that quantify territorial sustainability under uncertainty may help guide policy decisions from an investment programming viewpoint, particularly when it comes to allocating financial resources to the economic sectors most impacted by shock events such as the COVID-19 pandemic.