Graphical sustainability analysis using disjoint biplots

The assessment of sustainability is of the utmost importance nowadays. Several approaches exist that measure sustainability at a national level and rank countries accordingly. Comparison of countries could be done numerically or pictorially. This paper introduces a novel clustering disjoint HJ-biplot approach, which is then applied to data from two well-known models: Sustainability Assessment by Fuzzy Evaluation (SAFE) and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Index (UN-SDGs). This approach performs a graphical ranking that makes the sustainability standing of countries very transparent. As expected, the pictorial model yielded similar rankings to those of SAFE and UN-SDGs, but it additionally grouped countries according to their most important indicators, thereby yielding a more global picture of sustainability. Our approach thus comprises a useful complement to existing mathematical sustainability ranking models.