Modelling the social dimension of sustainable development using fuzzy cognitive maps

Sustainable development is portrayed as the interface between environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Social sustainability is often the vaguest and least explicit dimension in practical attempts to shape sustainable development. This research adopts fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) to model various factors affecting the social sustainability of a project. The various factors affecting the social dimension of sustainability in construction projects are first identified. The interactions that exist among these factors are then defined and the FCM model of social sustainability is constructed. The influencing factors are finally analyzed and ranked using the proposed dynamic and static analysis. The influencing factors with the highest rank are determined based on the results of performed dynamic analysis. Finally, the factors that should receive the highest attention to improve the social sustainability performance of construction projects are determined using static analysis.