Development of a multiple criteria based decision support system for environmental assessment of recycling measures in the iron and steel making industry

Recent years have seen a world-wide change in the environmental policy towards integrated pollution prevention and control, taking into account all environmental media. The integrated assessment of production processes under ecological, but also under technical and economic aspects requires specific methods. For preparing an investment decision in its entirety, the concepts of Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) seem to be more suitable for eco-management combined with investment decisions than Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In this paper, the decision support system KOSIMEUS, which is a combination of process models simulated with a flowsheeting program and a multicriteria decision support system, is presented and illustrated with an example from the iron and steel making industry.