An Assessment of Sustainable Development Using Delphi Technique and Multicriteria Decision-Making Method: A Case Study of Hai Phong City

In the context of climate change, together with the rapid development of the socio-economic situation, the negative impacts on the environment, resources, and ecosystems are increasing, causing the degradation of the sustainable system. Recognizing the urge for sustainability, the evaluation of sustainable development will be a powerful decision-making tool to unlock insights into reducing environmental negative impact as well as enhancing economic development while ensuring a prosperous society. This chapter aims to establish an indicator system to measure the sustainable development level in Hai Phong city from 2010 to 2021 based on dimensions of society, environment, and economy. By using the Delphi technique, stable preference ordering towards ideal solution (SPOTIS) method, this study evaluated through using 26 indicators that have compatibility and data availability suitable for the research object. Results show that Hai Phong’s SDI in the period 2010–2021 is relatively sustainable development despite being heavily affected by the economic recession in 2012 and the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019. The SDI in 2021 is 0.633, an increase 1.5 times higher than in 2010. By 2020, Hai Phong has achieved the goal of fairly sustainable development. This study recommended that it is essential to enhance the policies and planning and to have a synchronous development on the three dimensions of economy, society, and environment to improve the overall SDI. The research indicators and methods can be used to calculate the SDI in other provinces and specific cases with similar characteristics.