Anett Utasi

Using a Decision Support Software in the Course of the Planning of a Waste Management System in Hungary

Modernizing and rearrange the waste management system to the norms of the European Union is one of the most important tasks of the environmental protection in Hungary. Connected to this the Middle-Danube Region Waste Management System is one of the biggest infrastructure investments at present. This investment having an effect on six counties could solve the waste treatment problems of the residents for at least 20 years in the settlements affected. Systems approach mind is needed to complex waste management systems like this, in which beside landfills, plants for separated collection as sorting devices, compost piles, transfer points, waste yards are included and the recultivation of the inconvenient landfills is needed, too. Meeting the systems approach mind is possible only with computational decision support tools. Parmenides EIDOS is a module-based decision support software, specially developed for the economy and the corporate management. The goal of the research was to adapt these software toolkits to environmental field and to examine how the software could be used in the course of the planning of the Middle-Danube Region Waste Management System. According to the authors experience some modules of the software are able to apply well to simplify the complex decision situation and to lay stress on the most important problems. Subjectivity is unavoidable of course, but the subjective elements aid rather than hinder the process due to the group decision-making technique. (Wilkins, 2003) Further advantage is that the data, results are presented visually by this means the time of understanding decreases and keeping in mind become easier than reading naked data or tables. That is why the figures made with EIDOS could be part of a marketing material prepared for the population to increase their support for the investment.

Adapting the Sdewes Index to Two Hungarian Cities

Abstract Numerous cities aim to mitigate their contribution to climate change and provide a liveable environment in the context of sustainable development. In order to measure these efforts, benchmarking performance would be a good solution. Methods for environmental analysis have their limitations when it comes to evaluating a city and other aggregated indicators focus on certain aspects of a sustainable or liveable settlement. The SDEWES Index was used for benchmarking several cities of different sizes in terms of metrics related to energy, water and environmental systems successfully thus it was chosen to compare the performance of Veszprém and Zalaegerszeg, two environmentally conscious Hungarian county seats of roughly the same size and population. The SDEWES Index consists of 7 dimensions, namely energy consumption, industrial profile with CO2 emissions, CO2-saving measures, R&D, renewable energy potential and utilization, water and environmental quality, and social environment and sustainability policy. Each dimension is composed of 5 indicators that provide information on sustainable development of energy, water and environmental systems in cities. Using the SDEWES Index the strengths and weaknesses of the two cities are highlighted, locating those key parameters where improvement can be achieved. Both for Veszprém and Zalaegerszeg progress could be realized concerning energy-saving measures and the proportion of green areas could be increased. To improve the method and facilitate a more comprehensive comparison of cities of differing sizes, data should be provided concerning the territory or population. Also, the definition and inclusion of a worst and best case scenario that takes into account the parameters would be advantageous in terms of a comparison. These were named ‘horror’ and SDEWES cities by the authors, respectively.