1 Final_Fabio_De_Felice_Editorial IJAHP Editorial: De Felice, Fabio / Introduction to Special Issue on Sustainable Development International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 2 Vol. 4 Issue 1 2012 ISSN 1936-6744 Dear Colleagues, I am pleased to introduce the first special issue on AHP/ANP: Multicriteria Decision Making for Sustainable Development. The aim of this special issue is to provide a selection of papers from researchers, academics, and practitioners that provide significant insights into the area of Decision Making for Sustainable Development. Decision making in such a context is complex since it requires multiple evaluations of both tangible and intangible factors. In the field of sustainability, tangible factors relate to a wide spectrum of decision variables ranging from production systems performance to industrial costs. The papers collected in this special issue are intended to provide a representative sample of current research at the interface between AHP/ANP and Sustainable Development. This issue attempts to overcome the lack of “communication” between the two fields. We believe that the AHP/ANP approach to modeling environmental activities has enormous potential, and that there is much to be gained from their interaction. This issue of IJAHP represents an opportunity for many researchers and scientists around the world to present their own studies and research in this important field. Therefore, we consider this publication a chance to encourage the integration of international competencies in the field of Sustainable Development, supplying important cues for future research. Undoubtedly, we can affirm that the interest in sustainable development has definitely increased during the past few years, due to the complexity of the environment in which we live, that compels us to face a number of problems which are very great compared to the resources available. In order to face technical, scientific, social, economic and IJAHP Editorial: De Felice, Fabio / Introduction to Special Issue on Sustainable Development International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 3 Vol. 4 Issue 1 2012 ISSN 1936-6744 political problems, we must arrange our priorities and determine which elements may prevail over other ones. However, it often happens that our natural inclination to research and “discovery” yields to the complexity involved in reality. This sometimes exceeds our imagination and reason causes us to stop our ambitions in the quest for truth. A journal like IJAHP is entrusted to overcome this condition. A great man, J.B. Shaw, affirms that while the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. We owe the changes and innovations in research to this unreasonable man. The ISAHP conference and the papers collected in the IJAHP are an effort to stimulate that unreasonable man within us, and supply him with a place for discussion and confrontation, in order to freely propose ideas and solutions. The applications, methods, instruments and methodologies proposed in the papers presented in this special issue will contribute to strengthen the current research aimed at improving the quality of our environment. We hope that this issue offers an example of the scope and breadth of the growing amount of literature at the interface between AHP/ANP and Sustainable Development, and that it will help readers get acquainted with these new approaches and stimulate further collaborations between scientists of both disciplines. We would like to express our sincere thanks to IJAHP Editor-in-chief Dr. Enrique Mu for his kind and welcome offer to devote a special issue of the Journal of Analytic Hierarchy Process to this topic. We want to thank all the authors who submitted papers and express our gratitude to the referees for their precious support. Special thanks to Prof. Thomas and Rozann Saaty, dear friends who have given me the opportunity to organize ISAHP 2011. Prof. Fabio De Felice ISAHP 2011 Executive Organizer University of Cassino Italy Engineering Faculty Rob Typewritten Text http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v4i1.143