Plateforme d’évaluation multicritère de la durabilité

Présentation

The MEANS (MulticritEria AssessmeNt of Sustainability) platform was launched on January 1, 2012. Access to its tools was opened in 2014 for INRAE agents and in 2017 for all other users.
Since 2018, the platform is co-developed and managed by INRAE and CIRAD.

It is hosted by the INRAE Institut Agro SAS (Soil, Agro and hydro Systems) research unit in Rennes (western France).

The objective of the MEANS platform is to allow research teams from INRAE and its academic partners to perform multicriteria assessment of the sustainability of systems of crop production, livestock production and processing of agricultural products. They are divided into four missions:

  • Develop and provide multicriteria assessment computer tools to calculate sustainability indicators
  • Develop and share databases for multicriteria assessment
  • Train and provide support to users
  • Monitor scientific and technological advances in multicriteria assessment

Activities of the operational team

Through its portal, the MEANS platform provides access to reference methods:

  • Developed in whole or in part by INRAE, CIRAD and their partners.
  • Published, in national or international scientific journals, or presented at conferences.
  • Used by a large number of users in a research context

It also provides access to software tools dedicated to multicriteria analysis.

The MEANS platform team also develops its own tools. Currently, the platform focuses on environmental analysis. The MEANS team has developed a software tool with the support of ADEME (The French Environment and Energy Management Agency), called MEANS-InOut, which facilitates the performance of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of agricultural and agri-food production systems. The MEANS-InOut application is currently operational for the study of crop production, animal production and product processing systems.

Implementing methods and tools dedicated to all three dimensions of sustainability (economic, social and environmental dimensions) is a medium-to-long-term objective.  

Agribalyse

The Platform is a partner of ADEME's AGRIBALYSE® project , which aims to produce reference data for environmental analysis of agricultural products. The MEANS platform implements the tools to generate and update the databases that will be accessible to AGRIBALYSE partners.

The MEANS platform team actively participates in the work of the GIS REVALIM, which is responsible for updating the data for the environmental display of food products.

 

evolution means

The MEANS platform is organised around several bodies:

  • The INRAE and CIRAD directors: apply the policy defined by the Steering Committee, supervise and participate in ...
  • The Operational Committee: is the platform's daily management body. It supports the decisions of the directors
  • The Scientific Committee: provides scientific leadership for INRAE CIRAD on issues of multi-criteria evaluation of agricultural and food systems. It proposes scientific and strategic orientations to the Steering Committee of the MEANS platform.

In this section

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Steering committee determines partnership policies, makes strategic and scientific choices and sets priorities for development

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Operational team designs and develops platform tools (software, database, documentation, etc.) and trains and provides support to users

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The MEANS Scientific Committee is composed of about 20 "permanent" scientists from INRAE and CIRAD, in addition to the members of the Steering Committee and the platform team. Other "non-permanent" scientists are invited depending on the issues addressed. The Scientific Committee meets once a year.