Interlink decision making index (IDMI) -- a simple tool/concept to assist decision making for sustainability Part 1: definition of IDMI

There is an apparent gap between the LCA or other assessment's outcomes and its effective application in the decision making process. It is needed to provide to the decision makers a simple, less human interfered mechanism that integrates all the key criteria (environmental, economic, technical and safety etc.). The proposed index: Interlink Decision Making Index (IDMI) has all these features: simple, interlink (all criteria) and automatically and quantified influence of critical criteria (ie. no human weighting needed) and is able to assist the multi-criteria decision making for sustainability based on the outcomes of specific assessments (eg. LCA, ElA etc.). The index represents a pure numerical value and does not necessarily have any physical meanings, but it reflects the total merits of a particular option once the normal decision making criteria and (up to two) critical criteria (CC) have been chosen. Then, without arbitrarily weighting process, the comparison and selection of the best possible option, ie. decision can be made based on the derived IDMI results. Two hypothetical examples are presented in part 2 of the paper to demonstrate the application of the IDMI concept and it's differences with the traditional "tabular method" in the decision making process.