ELECTRE III as a support for waste incineration participatory decision making

Locating an incinerator and a facility to store ashes and other wastes is a long and complex process in Italy. The District of Turin faced this situation by choosing a participative approach to the problem and by using Multi-criteria Analysis as a support for a specific phase of this decision process. A group of forty five decision makers (local authorities and representatives from the different communities that were involved) worked together for sixteen months, with a facilitator group, to identify the criteria which are judged relevant to analyse the consequences of the location of a plant. Two multi-criteria models, one for an incinerator and the other for a waste disposal plant, were elaborated and an ELECTRE method was used to compare sites and rank them, with the aim of selecting the best sites to activate an Environmental Impact Assessment procedure. A team made up of analysts from different organisations supported this work from a technical point of view. This paper proposes an analysis of this participatory decision process and synthesises the difficulties and results of the multi-criteria decision aid intervention.