Multi-criteria assessment of sustainable mobility of employees

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we present an approach for the assessment of sustainable mobility of employees that is designed to be used in a unified way in different contexts. The approach is intended for assessment and self-assessment of organisations, for supporting decisions regarding sustainable mobility activities and eventually as the basis for awarding organisations with a sustainable mobility certificate. Its main contributions are tailored criteria and parameters for exposing sustainable mobility characteristics of an organisation in terms of current situation and future potential. The paper provides a detailed description and explanation of the methodology and an example of an application in practice. The results indicate that the approach is viable and operational and that the assessment results well represent the situation and provide clear indications of the challenges and the paths to improvement.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable mobility
• multi-criteria model
• weighted scoring

Introduction

Transport is essential for social interaction and economic growth. However, the current means of transport have direct and indirect effects on pollution, greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) and depletion of natural resources, causing sustainable transport and personal mobility to become a subject of regulations and encouragement schemes. In the Slovenian Integrated national energy and climate plan (NEPN, 2020), transport is one of the rare sectors for which a continuous increase in energy demands is projected at least until 2030. In its scope, road traffic is expected to be the largest contributor of GGE (contributing 99% of all transport GGE in 2017). Measures to reduce road traffic are thus very important for fulfilment of climate and environmental goals.

Most of the activities in terms of sustainable mobility encouragement are currently based on sustainable urban mobility plans (SUMPs) for municipalities and for organisations (employers) (Kiba-Janiak & Witkowski, 2019; Rupprecht et al., 2019), which serve their purpose of outlining courses of actions to reduce the use of cars and improve mobility-related wellbeing. Such mobility plans are tailored to specific organisations and include elaborate analysis of measures appropriate for that organisation and are as such not well suited for comparative assessment of organisations in various contexts. This role is more appropriately fulfilled by certificates which can serve regulatory needs and to align business practices with general environmental, economic, and social sustainability goals. Certificates can bring a range of benefits to individual organisations, too, including cost savings, employee satisfaction, and enhanced corporate reputation. Mobility of employees, however, does not seem to be well covered with established certificates and comparative assessment tools.

In this paper, we present an approach to sustainable mobility assessment of employees commuting to work that is designed to be used periodically and in a unified way in different contexts and organisations. As such, it aims to contribute to sustainable mobility assessment by a simple to use methodology with tailored criteria and parameters for exposing sustainable mobility characteristics of an organisation focused on the aspect of employees commuting. Development of this approach was done in the scope of a collaborative project SmartMOVE¹ which is aimed at strategic planning and support for execution of mobility plans in the Ljubljana region in Slovenia. Our sustainable mobility approach is intended to be used for assessment and self-assessment of organisations as a tool for supporting decisions regarding sustainable mobility activities and eventually as the basis for acquiring a sustainable mobility certificate. The assessment is based on multiple criteria, which are selected to reflect the sustainable mobility situation, as well as to be feasible in terms of data collection. Validation of our approach was done at five organisations that collaborate with SmartMOVE. In this paper, we present the most elaborate assessment, which was done at the Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI) where two large organisational units participated with their entire personnel. This use case indicates that the approach is viable and operational, as data collection was manageable and the results provide a good representation of the situation, with clear indications of challenges and the path towards improvement.

Related work

There are in general three kinds of related works that are relevant for the work presented in this paper: (I) the ones that provide mobility assessment-related criteria and models, (II) the related existing certificates, and (III) the related works in terms of applied assessment methodology.

1. Mobility assessment criteria and models. We conducted a thorough state-of-the-art analysis (Bohanec et al., 2022) in which we collected over 100 indicators and criteria that address Economic, Environmental and Social aspects of SUMP and represents a foundation for the selection made and presented in this paper. One of the most important sets of criteria that is proposed at the level of the European Commission is SUMI (Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators) (SUMI, 2020). It is a general set of indicators for evaluations and monitoring of SUMP conditions in urban environments. These indicators are very precisely defined, but the collection of necessary data might be challenging in practice (Finger & Serafimova, 2020). There are also many alternative structures and collections of such criteria, with the criteria by Awasthi et al. (2018) one of the most suitable for our purposes and a basis for our collection. We took into account also the work by Cieśla et al. (2020) that evaluate programs for the introduction of shared use of transport resources in cities and the work by Zapolskytė et al. (2020), which is very related to ours, as it deals with sustainable urban mobility evaluation at certain locations or organisations. Our criteria set was substantially influenced also by the ones discussed by Engels et al. (2012).

2. Related certificates. We could not find any certificates that would already focus on the sustainable mobility characteristics of organisations in sufficient depth. However, there are several standards and certificates that are much broader in their scope, such as the ISO 14,001:2015 standard² for environmental management, the related, but voluntary and stricter Eco-Management and Audit Scheme³ and similar Norwegian certification scheme EcoLighthouse.⁴ Out of the wider scope certificates, the most similar to our intended one is the Green Star (http://cer-slo.si), a certificate that a company can get for its contribution to a climate-neutral economy and society. The purpose of the Green Star is to assess where the company is on the path of green transformation and how ambitious it is in this respect. Green Star overlaps with the scope of our planned certificate in one (Mobility) of its seven groups of criteria. There are also some more specifically focused certificates that are related to our planned one, such as the Cycle-Friendly Employer Certification⁵ or initiatives for pedestrian friendly institutions. However, there is a notable gap among the assessment of overall sustainable operation and the specific assessments of cyclists and pedestrian friendliness, and we believe that a mobility focused certificate would cover a large part of this area that is yet to be supported with certification.

3. Assessment methodology. Sustainable mobility assessment involves multiple and possibly conflicting criteria. Consequently, prevalent methodological approaches in this area (Garcia-Ayllon et al., 2021) involve multi-criteria decision-modelling methods (MCDM) (Greco et al., 2016; Kulkarni, 2022). The selection of specific multi-criteria methods is quite varied and spans from scoring and weighted-sum methods (Cieśla et al., 2020; Garcia-Ayllon et al., 2021) through widely popular methods, such as AHP, TOPSIS and PROMETHEE (Kiba-Janiak & Witkowski, 2019; Manzolli, et al., 2021; Morfoulaki & Papathanasiou, 2021; Ortega et al., 2021; Zapolskytė et al., 2020), to other methods (VIKOR, GRA, COG, SIMUS, COPRAS) and their fuzzy extensions (see Bohanec et al., 2022, for an overview). For the solution proposed in this study, we chose a scoring method augmented with weights, which is commonly used in Slovenian administration and is likely to be easily adopted by the certificate issuing agency. A similar concept is also applied in ELTIS⁶ self-assessment approach in relation to the implementation of SUMPs⁷ and it was partly followed and adapted for the purpose of the certification process presented in this paper.

Methodology

There are a multitude of viewpoints and components that can be considered in the assessment of sustainable mobility: from the forms of transport that are taken into account, to the scope and scale of measures considered as relevant. One of our aims was to develop the tools for use in a certification system, which should be designed to award the organisations that are making a relevant effort towards sustainable mobility. In line with this, we had to consider various contexts of organisations, such as their locations, work characteristics and other factors that affect the mobility characteristics. An organisation at the outskirts of a city without public transport and three daily time shifts can contribute to changes in mobility of its employees in a very different way than an organisation that is well connected with public transport.

In terms of general methodology of solution development, our approach could be characterised as an example of Action design research (Sein et al., 2011), according to which we are at the stage of finished iteration of the first three phases: Problem formulation; Building, intervention and evaluation; Reflection and learning. However, during the second phase there have been numerous iterations of development of the model structure, as well as trial/error episodes during the process of conceptualizing/designing the scoring system.

In terms of the more specific context-adapted assessment methodology, our approach consists of two parts: (1) an assessment of the current state of sustainable mobility in the organisation, and (2) an assessment of the potential for improvement. These two parts are described in the following sub-sections.

Current sustainable mobility situation assessment

The current situation assessment is based on a questionnaire for management of the organisation, which is to be answered in collaboration with a mobility expert. The questionnaire consists of 50 questions, which are not shown here due to space limitation. Data from this questionnaire is used in a numerical multi-criteria assessment system. The criteria roughly correspond to the questions in the questionnaire and are hierarchically organised in three levels as shown in Table 1, where the numbered items correspond to questions of the questionnaire, higher-level aggregate criteria are typeset in capital letters and important criteria with weight 2 (instead of default 1) are typeset in bold. One or two asterisks denote mandatory criteria.

Table 1. Criteria for the assessment of employees’ mobility.

POTENTIAL FOR SUCCESS 1 Management commitment** 2 Identification of shareholders 3 Status and objectives 4 Recognition of opportunities** 4a on foot 4b cycling 4c public transport 5 Management as role model ORGANISATION 6 Sustainable mobility manager** 7 Making a strategy 8 Sustainability for work needs 9 Exchange of experience 10 Research and consulting* 11 Adjustment of work SITUATION AND SCENARIOS 12 Knowledge of travel habits** 13 Analysis of the situation 14 Discussion with stakeholders VISION 15 Existence of policy, strategy, plan:* 15a idea 15b concept 15c plan 15d mobility plan 15e demonstration 15f execution 16 Long-term vision PRIORITIES AND GOALS 17 Determination of objectives 18 Progress monitoring enabled (SMART Targets) 19 Contribution to achieving the vision GENERAL MEASURES 20 Raising awareness & informing employees** 21 Traffic maps 22 Premises

SPECIFIC MEASURES-Walking 23 Connecting the entrance to public areas 24 Priority for pedestrians SPECIFIC MEASURES-Cycling 25 Access 26 Parking lots and stands 27 Proximity 28 Against theft 29 Maintenance 30 Workplace bikes 31 Awards for cycling 32 Discounts for employees SPECIFIC MEASURES-Public transport 33 Access 34 Transferable ticket 35 Notification-information SPECIFIC MEASURES-Motorized traffic 36 Sharing incentives 37 Restriction of parking 38 Paid access 39 Changes in purpose 40 Reduction num. company cars 41 Cancellation of benefits SPECIFIC MEASURES-Customers and visitors 42 Bicycle parking spaces for guests 43 Motivational mobility program 44 Bicycle service for customers SPECIFIC MEASURES-Accessibility for all 45 Information for the disabled SPATIAL PLANNING 46 Planning for permanent. mobility RESPONSIBILITIES AND FUNDING 47 Action plan 48 Activities/implementation plans** MONITORING AND PLANNING 49 Regular monitoring and auditing 50 Data collection, monitoring, evaluation plan

Each criterion can take a value of 0, 0.5 or 1 for the cases of not satisfying (0), partly satisfying (0.5) or fully satisfying it (1). Important criteria (printed in bold in Table 1) have additionally a weight of 2, so that in such a case the set of possible criteria values becomes 0, 1 and 2, respectively. The questionnaire is equipped with detailed instructions for circumstances when each criterion can be considered (partly) satisfied or not.

Methodologically, the proposed model is a hierarchical multi-criteria model that uses a simple weighted-sum aggregation method, where the weights are 1 (most attributes) and 2 (important attributes). The assessment is carried out by summing up the weighted values of individual criteria. The aggregation proceeds hierarchically according to the structure of the model, so that the corresponding weighted sums are assigned to higher-level criteria (those named using capital letters in Table 1).

Besides being important and having a larger weight, the criteria can also be considered mandatory in the sense that these criteria need to be satisfied regardless of their weight. In Table 1, these are marked with asterisks – one asterisk, if it is mandatory that they are at least partly satisfied, and two asterisks if they need to be fully satisfied. The notion of being mandatory is intended for qualitative purposes of situation analysis and does not affect the numerical assessment.

Assessment of mobility structure and potential for improvement

The assessment of the organisation’s potential for sustainable mobility is based on a questionnaire for the employees, which yields information on the mobility structure and the potential for its improvement. The mobility structure is defined as a distribution of employees’ means of transportation to work. The questionnaire contains questions on the most common means of such transportation. For assessment of the potential, the most important questions are the ones on the distance to work.

We define mobility potential as the (potential) ability of an organisation to positively influence the sustainable mobility of its employees. In this regard, organisations can be very different from each other. Some are located far from populated areas and are not well connected with public transport. Despite the initial low frequency of walking or riding a bicycle, big positive changes cannot be realistically expected in such cases. As a result, the potential of such an organisation is small. On the other hand, there are organisations that have excellent conditions for development of sustainable mobility. If most employees of such organisations drive by car, the potential for a positive change is high as significant positive changes can be made. However, if such an organisation has already exploited the potential of sustainable mobility and most employees already use sustainable mobility means and the use of cars is low, the potential is again small and big changes are no longer possible or expected.

The potential is measured in two ways: as objective potential and as a subjective one. The objective potential only depends on the distance to the workplace and is assessed according to the following rules:

• If an employee is up to 2 km from the workplace and does not yet use a sustainable mode of transport, (s)he might be able to walk to work.

• Up to 5 km: then a viable possibility is to use a bicycle.

• Up to 10 km: then a viable possibility is to use an e-bike.

Of course, the so-called objective potential does not consider constraints posed by personal circumstances or strong preferences. This is why the questionnaire also contains questions whether each sustainable mobility option might be possible, impossible or unwanted, based on which the subjective potential is assessed.

The motivation for assessing mobility structure and potential is twofold. First, the results provide a valuable insight in the organisation’s current mobility situation and can be combined with the multi-criteria assessment (above) to analyse the situation and suggest measures for the future. Second, and more important, perpetual assessments of mobility structure and potential (e.g. each 3 years) and their comparison indicate organisations’ progress in time. Organisations having substantial potential are expected to progress more than those that have already fully used their potential.

Use case: Jožef Stefan Institute

The proposed approach was tested in practice in 2023 at the Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI). Assessment of the current state was performed by the authors, who are employed by JSI and have good insight in its mobility status. The mobility structure and potential for sustainable mobility were assessed with the employee questionnaire. Two large JSI’s units participated in the test case study/survey, which together account for approximately 7% of the JSI staff. The staff of these departments work in two very different locations in terms of mobility:

• Location A, main location at Jamova cesta 39 in Ljubljana, located in an urban area. It has good connections to public transport and bicycle paths. The number of available parking spaces is limited and they are mostly occupied all the time.

• Location B, Reactor Centre, Brinje 40, located on the outskirts of Ljubljana, about 10 km from the centre. It is poorly connected by public transport, too far for walking and cycling, and there is enough space for parking cars.

Current sustainable mobility situation assessment

The results of multi-criteria evaluation are presented in Table 2 and in Figures 1 and 2. The scores are aggregated into the 10 highest-level criteria. The specific measures are further subdivided into six sub-areas (from walkability to accessibility for all) for the sake of comprehensiveness. All numerical values are shown on a normalised interval between 0 (no achievement in this area) and 100 (maximum possible score achieved in this area) to improve the comprehensibility and facilitate comparability of the criteria. It should be understood that the evaluation is based on the sum of the scores (not shown here) and not on the normalised scores; therefore, the final score (TOTAL) is not the sum of the normalised scores, but the normalised sum of all the scores. In addition to the normalised scores, the last column of Table 2 also shows the number of conditions that are not met by JSI in given criteria groups, but should be considered mandatory for an organisation to be regarded as one that supports sustainable mobility of its employees. The six unmet conditions at JSI are mainly due to the fact that the organisation has not yet adequately addressed (organisationally and implementation-wise) the area of sustainable mobility. These conditions can be met with relatively small effort.

Figure 1. Evaluation of JSI according to the ten top-level criteria.

Figure 2. Evaluation of JSI’s-SPECIFIC MEASURES, broken down to the six transport modalities.

Table 2. Evaluation results – normalised scores and unfulfilled mandatory conditions.

CRITERION	NORMALISED SCORE	MANDATORY UNFULFILLED
POTENTIAL FOR SUCCESS	0	2
ORGANISATION	63	1
SITUATION AND SCENARIOS	33	1
VISION	17
PRIORITIES AND GOALS	0
GENERAL MEASURES	75	1
SPECIFIC MEASURES	50
Walking	67
Cycling	72
Public transport	50
Motorised transport	29
Customers and visitors	33
Accessibility for all	0
SPATIAL PLANNING	0
RESPONSIBILITIES AND FUNDING	17	1
MONITORING AND PLANNING	0
TOTAL	38	6

JSI received the normalised score 38 (out of 100) and has 6 unfulfilled mandatory conditions. These results are relatively low because JSI is not yet formally focussing on this issue and, consequently, lacks some important elements: analyses of JSI’s potential for success, no assigned mobility manager, and not having a clearly defined vision and objectives. It is true, however that JSI already has relatively well-organised general and specific measures for different types of commuting, indicated by relatively high scores obtained for GENERAL and SPECIFIC MEASURES. Consequently, JSI could meet the mandatory conditions and improve its scores significantly in each area with a limited number of focused actions in a relatively short period of time.

Assessment of mobility structure and potential for improvement

As already mentioned, the JSI premises are at two locations that are very different in terms of their potential for sustainable mobility. All analyses have been carried out for each location separately and for both locations together. The questionnaires were duly completed by 62 employees, 34 at the main site Location A and 28 at Location B.

The mobility structure (in Figure 3) is based on the answers to the question ‘How do you usually travel to work?’ Choose one answer – the mode of transport you usually use most often or, if you combine different modes of transport, the one you use for the longest part of your journey’.

Figure 3. Mobility structure of the two JSI locations separately and jointly, shown as a percentage of employees of each individual group.

Private car commuting, in which the employees drive themselves, is most common at Location B, which is difficult to access without a car. Location A is in the city, which is why more employees commute there by bicycle. The differences in accessibility are clearly seen in the mobility structure of the employees in Figure 3, where, e.g. we can see that 54% of employees at Location B travel to work in a car alone, while such share for employees at Location A is only 21%. On the other hand, 38% of employees at Location A cycle to work, while at Location B the share of cyclists is only 14%.

Next, we assess the potential for improving the mobility structure by calculating the ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ potential, as defined in the methodology section. Table 3 shows the objective modal shift potential for both sites combined. The table shows the number of employees who could in principle switch from a non-sustainable mode of transport (vertically: ‘car – single’ means the employee is alone in the car and ‘car – multiple’ represents all other modalities involving a private car, including carpooling and car sharing) to a more sustainable one: walking, cycling or e-bike (horizontally).

Table 3. The objective potential of the two JSI locations separately and combined, shown by the number of persons.

Total
Current modality	Potential - walk	Potential - bike	Potential - e-bike
Car - single	1	3	6
Car - multiple	0	1	2
Public transport	0	3	5
Location A
Current modality	Potential - walk	Potential - bike	Potential - e-bike
Car - single	1	3	3
Car - multiple	0	1	2
Public transport	0	3	3
Location B
Current modality	Potential - walk	Potential - bike	Potential - e-bike
Car - single	0	0	3
Car - multiple	0	0	0
Public transport	0	0	2

Looking at both sites separately, it can be seen that the objective potential is very different. At Location A, we see some potential to reduce car use at the expense of cycling (4 persons), e-cycling (5 persons) and walking (one person) and to shift from public transport use to (e-)cycling (6 persons). This could be beneficial for the health of employees who would be more physically active. The objective potential for sustainable mobility is lower at Location B site, where the only alternative to car and public transport is, due to the distance, the e-bike, and even then, only for a limited number of employees (5 persons).

The subjective potential for changing the mobility structure was assessed on the basis of four questions of the questionnaire for employees. Each of the questions refers to one of the four sustainable modes of transport (walking, public transport, cycling and carpooling) and asks about the possibility that the respondent would come to work in such a way instead of the current way. The possible answers were ‘not possible for me’, ‘possible but I don’t want to’ and ‘feasible’. When analysing the current mode of transport, we considered five categories: ‘car – single’ - using a private car as the only passenger; ‘car – multiple’ - all modes of transport involving a private car, including carpooling and car sharing; ‘active commute’ - all types of bicycles and scooters and walking; and ‘public transport’. Table 4 contains the subjective potential for both locations combined (we don’t explicitly present the numbers for individual locations here, because the differences between the two locations are similar as for the objective potential). The first column shows the current mode of transportation to work, while the last four columns show the number of employees who answered ‘not possible for me’, ‘possible, but I don’t want to’ for each method of getting to work (passenger, public transport, bicycle, walking) ” and ‘feasible’. The tables give all the answers obtained for all possible changes in the way of arriving at work. Transitions to more sustainable mobility options are coloured green in the table.

Table 4. The subjective potential of JSI for both locations combined.

Current modality	Potential	Carpooling	Public transport	Bike	Walk
Car - single	Not possible for me	6	8	12	20
	Possible, but I don’t want to	5	13	7	2
	Feasible	11	1	3	0
	Total	22	22	22	22
Car - multiple	Not possible for me	0	1	3	6
	Possible, but I don’t want to	0	4	2	0
	Feasible	0	1	1	0
	Total	0	6	6	6
Public transport	Not possible for me	4	0	6	9
	Possible, but I don’t want to	1	0	3	2
	Feasible	6	0	2	0
	Total	11	0	11	11
Active commute	Not possible for me	6	7	0	5
	Possible, but I don’t want to	7	13	2	6
	Feasible	9	3	2	8
	Total	22	23	4	19

We can see that the subjective potential is basically similar to the objective one, and that the greatest room for improvement is in avoiding commuting by car, where employees are in the car alone (feasible alternatives are carpooling – for 11 persons, public transport – for one person, and cycling – for 3 persons). Employees mainly see carpooling, public transport and cycling as alternative means of transport, but a significant proportion of them believe that this is feasible, but do not want to do it for various reasons. Among the reasons given, the distance and the time required stand out.

Discussion

The general findings of the assessment model test can be summarised as follows: (I) The proposed method is operational. It was relatively easy to obtain answers to the management questionnaire questions and evaluate them. The data is clearly identifiable. Calculations of the model are relatively simple, feasible and comprehensible. (II) The model is undoubtedly sensitive, as any change in the input data necessarily changes the output result. (III) In terms of minimality and simplicity, we aimed for a compromise: to cover the widest possible picture of the state of sustainable mobility in the organisation with as few questions as possible (which was 50). (IV) From the experience of surveying the work of employees at JSI, we conclude that this questionnaire is also operational and gives a useful picture of the mobility structure and the potential for its change. (V) An important innovation is that the questionnaire for employees captures both the objective (based on distances to the workplace and the mode of transport used) and subjective (individuals’ opinion on the possibilities of change) potential of the organisation. Both assessments are meant to assess progress in the past period and act as a guide for introducing changes.

The application of the proposed model at a specific organisation offers useful information that can be used at several levels. The organisation aiming to improve the sustainability of their workers’ transport to work can use the results of the current sustainable mobility situation assessment directly in order to improve internal organisation to better support sustainable transport of their workers. Namely, the assessment criteria of the model can easily be transcribed into a list of actions that the organisation should implement. Using the information on the mobility structure and assessment of objective and subjective potentials for improvement, the organisation can also easily identify which types of sustainable transport should be encouraged among employees with suitable actions. In our case, the results show potential in cycling and e-cycling, therefore, the organisation might build secure bike lockers, showers, offer favourable bike rental plans and other benefits for cyclists. However, under the assumption that the assessment model (and a certificate) would be used by many organisations in a specific city, the aggregated results could also be of use for city planners. For example, in our case, the assessment of the potential for improvement shows that for many people public transport is (objectively or subjectively) not a feasible option of transport. The public transport planners could therefore use this information, e.g. to improve the existing or introduce new public transport lanes.

Conclusion

This paper presents an approach to the assessment of sustainable mobility in organisations, which was developed to address the gap between the existing general and very specific sustainable mobility assessment aspects. There are two main components of the assessment: the assessment of the situation and of the potential. While serving as a certification model was one of the initial motivations for the development of this approach, it can have a considerably wider applicability. In essence, it is a process that checks an organisation’s readiness to manage sustainable mobility in an efficient and straightforward way. By reviewing the results according to individual criteria, one can clearly identify the positive aspects and the challenges to work on in the future. Compared to the creation of a mobility plan, it is an easier, faster and cheaper process. It is not providing all the results we expect from a mobility plan (a detailed review of the situation, a proposal for concrete measures and activities, their financial estimation), but it is useful as an initial step in this direction and it is made to allow for comparative assessments of diverse organisations.

Our future efforts will be primarily directed at establishing the certificate and underlying methodology as a viable and respected means for rewarding organisations that contribute to sustainable mobility. On the technical side, this means continuous verification of the approach in practice and its improvement from experience. On the other hand, we must establish an environment in which the certificate truly comes to life and brings tangible benefits to organisations that care about sustainable mobility. This includes governmental support and appropriate amendments to legislation.

Acknowledgments

This work has been funded by the SmartMOVE project, which is co-financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway funds from the EEA Financial Mechanism and corresponding Slovenian participation within the Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation programme in the amount of 1,609.167 €. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the authors and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the Climate Change Mitigation and Adaption Program Authority. The authors also acknowledge the financial support from the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency for research core funding for the programme Knowledge Technologies (No. P2-0103). The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the EEA and Norway Grants as well as the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency..

Notes on contributors

Bernard Ženko

Bernard Ženko is a research associate at the Department of Knowledge Technologies at the Jožef Stefan Institute. His interests are related to artificial intelligence, machine learning and their application to practical problems including ambient assisted living and environmental and life sciences. His work includes methods for combining multiple classifiers, learning rule-based models for predicting structured variables and network reconstruction.

Martin Žnidaršič

Martin Žnidaršič is a senior researcher at the Department of Knowledge Technologies of the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia. His main research interests are in machine learning, decision modelling and text analytics. As a decision and data analyst, he was involved in several international, national and commercial projects, commonly acting as work package leader. He is teaching machine learning and artificial intelligence courses at the Jožef Stefan International Postgraduate School in Ljubljana and the Faculty of Industrial Engineering in Novo Mesto.

Davor Kontić

Davor Kontić is a senior researcher at the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana. He is currently a leader of the Modelling, Environmental Impact And Risk Assessment group at the Department of Environmental Sciences. He has extensive experience in risk assessment and policy making in relation to air pollution and climate forcing from industrial and transport-related activities. He has gained the experience through domestic and EU funded large-scale research projects (CIVITAS “City-Vitality-Sustainability” initiative, ICARUS “Integrated Climate forcing and Air pollution Reduction in Urban Systems” project), where he was engaged in evaluation and monitoring activities concerning the implementation of air pollution reduction measures. He was also involved in various other projects related to life cycle analysis and GHG calculations.

Marko Bohanec

Marko Bohanec is a senior researcher at the Jožef Stefan Institute, professor of computer science at the University of Nova Gorica and a leading Slovenian researcher in the field of decision support models and systems. His research interests include decision making, decision analysis, decision support, decision modelling, artificial intelligence, expert systems, machine learning and data mining. He collaborated as a decision support expert in many European projects, particularly on the management of food and feed (ECOGEN, SIGMEA, Co-Extra, DECATHLON), health-care (PD_manager, HeartMan) and nuclear safety (NARSIS).

Notes

1. https://www.smart-move.si/en/

2. https://www.iso.org/files/live/sites/isoorg/files/store/en/PUB100371.pdf

3. https://ec.europa.eu/environment/emas/index_en.html

4. https://eco-lighthouse.org

5. https://cfe-certification.eu/

6. www.eltis.org

7. http://www.sump-challenges.eu/content/sump-self-assessment-tool-now-online