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comparisons. Outranking may optimize and protect against nonsense option
selection setting a veto threshold for these. The result of outranking is an option,
which will be better in most of the criteria than the others, and not much worse
than those in which the others are better;

- Evaluation by weighting-rating : after having organized the evaluation criteria into

a standardized form, e.g., the evaluation matrix shown in Table 9.3, the judgment
can be performed by rating the quantitative and qualitative values in the matrix.
This evaluation—even using the uniform weighting rating system—will never be
fully “objective'' because the factual and objective elements will appear in com-
bination with the subjective view and preferences of the evaluators, representing
stakeholder groups with conflicting interests;

- The decision makers can aggregate their judgments in the matrices which yields

their personal aggregated scores. In the next step the judgments of all personal
matrices will be aggregated resulting in overall weighted scores. Aggregations are
generally made using software tools, and special rules are applied to assist e.g. a
local government or compromise between individual judgments;

- After aggregation of the judgments, the evaluator team will make the final ranking

and validate and accept the results or decide about changes in the evaluation sys-
tem (weightings, type of analysis, etc.), repeat and/or correct the entire evaluation
or some of its phases.

EC MCA (2013) summarizes the strengths and opportunities of MCA as follows:
“it provides a framework in which all the actors can take part in decision making and
problem solving. Through negotiation between stakeholders and explicit treatment of
judgment criteria, the technique serves to give form to an unstructured reality.''

6.3 Social impact assessment
Environmental management and ERM may have positive and negative social impacts.
Some of them can be precisely measured, others cannot. Some impacts are quantifi-
able, others can only be characterized by qualitative descriptions. Some of the data are
available, while others are not. People who are affected by the same environmental
management measures may belong to different regional, sectorial, age and gender
groups: employees, residents, children, families, elderly people, farmers, miners,
fishers, athletes, etc.
Social impacts can be best identified by assessing the changes in the quantity and
quality of employment, income, workplace conditions, health and safety, social pro-
tection and equity. The environment plays an important role by conveying health and
social impacts as well as life quality to humans. Economic impacts are also in a strong
connection with social welfare, employment and social safety.
Similarly to environmental assessment, in the case of social environment, one has
to seek to assess all the existing impacts, not only the easily visible ones, but also the
long-term impacts (in addition to the short-term ones), and both direct and indirect
effects. Some positive and negative impacts may cancel each other. In this case it is
important to consider which groups may experience an impact and in which way. For
instance, farmers may lose their “workplace'' due to industrial expansion or a mine