Applying multi-criteria decision analysis to prioritise age-friendly criteria for policy implications

ABSTRACT

Significant increase in the proportion of elderly and its expected further increase in the days to come draw attention of policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to enhance a community’s age-friendliness. Enhancement of a community’s age-friendliness requires appropriate policy implications recommended by various stakeholders based on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) followed by Friedman’s rank test. Results showed that ‘safety and security’ has the highest priority amongst all the criteria considered for the assessment of age-friendliness. Based on Friedman’s rank test, community boundary with security check posts has the highest priority to increase safety and security of the community. A combination of policy measures having higher priority such as ‘police patrolling’, ‘mixed land-use urban planning’, and ‘accessibility to services’ could be the effective solution to increase safety and security of the community environment and foster independent living ability of its residents which in turn play important role in increasing age-friendliness of the community.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy
• enhancement
• safety
• assessment
• age-friendliness

Acknowledgments

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur funded the research work for award of PhD degree to the Author. Therefore, the Author would like to thank the Institute for financial support.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sashi Bhusan Raut

Sashi Bhusan Raut is an Associate Professor in Piloo Mody College of Architecture at Biju Patnaik University of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha, India. He completed his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India with a thesis on ‘ Age-friendliness Assessment Model, A Delphi-AHP-Fuzzy Logic-Approach’. Dr. Raut’s main scholarly interest is on the sustainability of cities in developing countries like India and similar environmental settings. His works mainly focus on Age-friendly design, Universal design, and the production of sustainable building materials and products that make the community livable and sustainable. He also works on formulating policies and guidelines for a sustainable community.