# 132

Dear Omar Sharaf-addeen Alansary and Tareq Al-Ansari

I read your paper:

Developing a Strategic Sustainability Assessment Methodology for Free Zones Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process Approach

My comments:

1- Really interesting the subject of this paper applicable to free zones.

2- You say that dealing with sustainability all dimension must apply, which is most certainly correct.

Nevertheless, you know that in sustainability, the three dimensions, economy, environment and social must be considered and compared at the same time, in oden to determine the common space for the three of them.

Consequently, in sustainability you do not up the effects of each individual dimension and them adds them up. That is not sustainability, it is o not a sum or union (U) of effects; what you are looking is for the intersections of (∩) of dimensions

For instance, there is relation between pollution and supportive infrastructure (ECO) and contamination (ENV). Apparently, your paper ignores them

Also, you do not add up the different criteria within a certain dimension.

Think for instance that in economic dimension, performance is not independent of incentives or investment. If you analyze some of the projected financial statements of any company you can verify that they are all related. Don’t you think that there is a relation between for instance supportive infrastructure (ECO) and contamination(ENV)? As an example, just think in the costly sound barriers that must be built in highways to ameliorate the noise affect to people living nearby.

This is not considered in AHP, but it is not related to the method itself, it is related with its inappropriate use, it was not designed for that.

What you must do is to find the common space shared by the different dimensions, and thus, you must use intersections of criteria, However, AHP forbids it, since as Saaty said many times, in AHP the criteria or dimensions in this case, must be independent, and they clearly ARE NOT, your use of AHP in this scenario is invalid as well as the conclusions you reach.

I hope that these few comments may help

Nolberto Munier