Evaluation of airport environmental management performance with multi criteria decision making methods: An application at five major airports in Türkiye

Although the focus on the environmental impacts of air transportation is on the airline industry, airports have environmental impacts in many aspects such as emissions from ground operations, noise impacts and energy use in the terminal building. This study aims to identify the criteria that reflect the environmental management performance of airports, to determine the importance of these criteria and to evaluate the environmental management performance of the five major airports in Türkiye in order to contribute to better management of environmental impacts of airports. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews and multi criteria decision making methods were used. SWARA method was used to weight the criteria and COCOSO, MARCOS, TOPSIS, VIKOR and Borda methods were used to evaluate the alternatives. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the most important main criterion is carbon emission and energy management criterion, while the least important main criterion is biodiversity management criterion. Istanbul Airport has the highest overall environmental management performance. It was followed by Antalya Airport, Sabiha Gökçen Airport, Ankara Esenboğa Airport and Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport. It is observed that busier airports have higher performance. On the other hand, for the main criterion of noise management, it is concluded that the performance of less busy airports is higher. In terms of water and waste management, airports located in relatively warmer climates are found to have lower performance.