Assessing Europe's Sustainability Performance in the Context of SDG 9-Aligned Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure Criteria Using MCDM Methods

This study evaluates the relative performance of European countries within the scope of SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) based on seven key criteria. These criteria, obtained from the Eurostat database, include industrial air emission intensity, the ratio of R&D expenditures to GDP, the added value generated in environmental goods and services, patent applications filed with the European Patent Office, the number of R&D personnel, the share of buses and trains in passenger transport, and the higher education graduation rate. The criterion weights in the decision matrix were determined using three different weighting approaches: Equal Weighting, Entropy, and CRITIC. In the performance ranking phase, a total of eleven Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methods were applied, namely TOPSIS, MOOSRA, MABAC, PSI, ROV, WSM, WPM, WASPAS, REF-I, REF-II, and Borda. These methods assessed country performance from multiple analytical perspectives, and the resulting rankings were synthesized holistically using the Borda aggregation method. All analyses were conducted using KA-Decision, an open-access decision-support platform designed for scientific research and decision-making applications, thereby ensuring transparency and reproducibility. The results show that Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and France consistently ranked at the top across all methods. In contrast, countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, and Serbia demonstrated relatively low performance in terms of sustainable industry, innovation, and infrastructure indicators. The use of different weighting techniques resulted in limited yet notable variations in country rankings. Overall, the study underscores the significance of MCDM methods and digital decision-support tools in the multidimensional assessment of sustainable development goals.