Ordering EU Countries According to Indicators of Sustainable Development

Abstract

Some synthetic measures of sustainable development (SD) for European Union (EU) countries are investigated. Rankings of EU countries are performed and compared. An “expert” method of ranking objects as projected on a “bad-good” axis is analyzed and compared with method based on Euclidean distances from hypothetical “best” point in multidimensional indicators’ space. Conclusions with regard to SD level of individual countries are drawn and some suggestions about adequacy of certain SD indicators are made.

Keywords

• Sustainable development
• SD indicators
• ranking
• ranks correlation
• multiple criteria