Prioritize strategies to confront environmental deterioration in urban areas: Multicriteria assessment of public opinion and experts’ views

Anthropogenic pressure on the urban environment has recently reached critical levels in numerous conurbations worldwide. In this context, taking specific measures as a response has become a necessity for environmental managers in an effort to confront such pressures and to move towards sustainable development. However, in practice, funding of abatement strategies is often limited and decision-makers are obliged to prioritize them in terms of performance, viability, social acceptance, maturity or other case-specific criteria. In order to arrive at an effective, successful and realistic bundle of measures, a consensus between experts and the public needs to be built. This paper aims at the development of a methodological approach that focuses on the multicriteria prioritisation of abatement strategies for urban areas. The developed methodology is demonstrated through its application on a real-world case study for the metropolitan area of Thessaloniki, Greece.

► Methodological approach for prioritization of measures to confront environmental deterioration in urban areas.
► Ranking of all available improvement strategies.
► Consensus between experts and the public concerning abatement strategies to be promoted.
► Environmental pressures’ relative importance.
► Environmental pressures’ significance