A holistic review of applied methodologies for assessing and selecting the optimal technological alternative from a sustainability perspective

Assessing and selecting the optimal technological alternatives in industrial sector is a fundamental tool to improve and adapt the industrial processes to the European legislation, which encourages the incorporation of new technologies for minimising the environmental impacts of companies such as Best Available Techniques. The aim of this study is to perform a holistic analysis of this process from a sustainability perspective. That is to say, its purpose is to analyse the studies that have been published in the literature over the last decade concerning the way the different improvements incorporated into different industrial sectors (Best Available Techniques, green technologies, remediation technologies, emission abatement technologies, etc.) are assessed and selected from a range of perspectives (environmental, technical, economic, social, etc.). Thus, an extensive review of the literature was performed to determine which criteria are the most widely used, the methodologies applied to choose those criteria, the sources of information the data is obtained from, the methodologies for calculating the indicators that allow each criterion to be measured, the different normalising and weighting methods that are applied, the techniques that are most commonly used to compare and choose the best technological alternatives and, finally, the sensitivity analyses that are most often applied to such processes. As a result, the process for assessing and selecting technologies is characterised and the guidelines to direct the selection of the set of methodologies that are the most appropriate to make a decision related to technology selection in future applications are established. •The process for assessing and selecting sustainable technologies has been characterised.•Criteria for selecting technological alternatives have been identified.•Methodologies for measuring sustainable criteria have been identified.•Methods for selecting the best sustainable technology have been reviewed.