Public higher education sector is under a growing pressure worldwide to increase efficiency and improve the quality of its activities. Limited financial resources as well as detailed regulations and supervision of their spending are the important features of the public higher education sector. Another important and debated issue is the division of public money among higher education institutions (HEI). It is therefore crucial to create stimuli for the rational management of public funds by HEI and for the quality improvement of HEI services. One of the proposed ways to achieve the desired result is the comparative efficiency assessment of HEI activities. Setting clear reference points for HEI, such assessment may be treated as a substitute for market competition. This paper describes a comparative efficiency study of 19 Polish universities of technology. Detailed analysis of potential input, output and environmental variables describing the HEI efficiency model was carried out. The study used the CCR-CRS output-oriented DEA model. It was assumed that HEI had more influence on achieved results than on the amount of their resources. The economies of scale were also studied in relation to the efficiency achieved. Sensitivity of the model to data errors was tested.

The article briefly discusses the content and terms of construction project management. It identifies the main problems of construction management and discusses ways to solve those using multi-criteria methods. Well-performed management is one of the critical factors which leads to the success of any significant sustainable project. Construction project management consists of setting goals and defining user requirements, project constraints, and resources needed. This paper aims to create a practically useful model. The paper presents a comprehensive set of criteria, which led to the creation of a decision-making model for construction management, which was applied to a Turkish case study. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method and the Expert Choice computer program were used for calculations.

The concept of sustainability has been expanding to all areas of economic activity, including construction engineering. Construction engineering is a complex discipline that involves designing, planning, constructing and managing infrastructures. In this Special Issue, 27 selected and peer-reviewed papers contribute to sustainable construction by offering technological, economic, social and environmental benefits through a variety of methodologies and tools, including fundamental decision-making models and methods as well as advanced multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods and techniques. The papers are mainly concentrated in five areas: Sustainable architecture; construction/reconstruction technology and sustainable construction materials; construction economics, including investments, supply, contracting and costs calculation; infrastructure planning and assessment; project risk perception, analysis and assessment, with an emphasis on sustainability.

The sustainable development of cloud service providers (CSPs) is a significant multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem, involving the intrinsic relations among multiple alternatives, (quantitative and qualitative) decision criteria and decision-experts for the selection of trustworthy CSPs. Most existing MCDM methods for CSP selection incorporated only one normalization technique in benefit and cost criteria, which would mislead the decision results and limit the applications of these methods. In addition, these methods did not consider the reliability of information given by decision-makers. Given these research gaps, this study introduces a Z-number-based double normalization-based multiple aggregation (DNMA) method to tackle quantitative and qualitative criteria in forms of benefit, cost, and target types for sustainable CSP development. We extend the original DNMA method to the Z-number environment to handle the uncertain and unreliability information of decision-makers. To make trade-offs between normalized criteria values, we develop a Gini-coefficient based weighting method to replace the mean-square-based weighting method used in the original DNMA method to enhance the applicability and isotonicity of the DNMA method. A case study is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Furthermore, comparative analysis and sensitivity analysis are implemented to test the stability and applicability of the proposed method.

With this article we strive to create a theoretical valuation model based on multiple criteria mathematical methods by selecting a basic shape of single-family residential house‘s plan. Most of the researches and analysis discuss the interfaces of architectural shapes of the buildings with sustainability only in the buildings with unique design. Meanwhile, the model comprising a selection of a basic shape of the singlefamily house was not implemented. Our study evaluated the individual parameters associated with selection of the house shape: compactness, safety, material input, variability of premises and spaces. The SWARA (Step-Wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis) method is applied in the calculation of the relative importance of the criteria and the EDAS (The Method of Evaluation Based on Distance from Average Solution) method was used to prioritize the alternatives.