Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environmental Impact Assessment Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eiar Application of data envelopment analysis in environmental impact assessment of a coal washing plant: A new sustainable approach Sajjad Mohebali a,c , Soroush Maghsoudy a,b , Faramarz Doulati Ardejani a,b, ⁎ a School of Mining, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran b Mine Environment & Hydrogeology Research Laboratory (MEHR Lab), University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran c School of Progress Engineering, Iran University of Science & Technology, Tehran, Iran. ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Sustainable EIA Alborz Sharghi coal washing plant Total potential improvement DEA unit ABSTRACT The main problem of traditional methods of environmental impact assessment (EIA) is that in most of the existing algorithms and methods, such as Leopold, Folchi and RIAM, the main attention is to the destructive effects of the proposed plan, and the advantages of the industrial project are less noticeable. This has led to a permanent challenge between environmental organizations and industrial stakeholders. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a new approach of assessing the industrial units. Besides, it considers the positive economic and social impacts of the project and provides a comprehensive assessment of the industrial unit. With this approach, the environmental impacts of an industrial unit have been considered as “inputs” and its positive economic and social impacts considered as the “outputs” of the DEA models. Therefore, the problem of impact assessment changes into a DEA model. In the present study, the Alborz Sharghi Coal washing plant in northern Iran has been considered as a case study for implementing the DEA-EIA approach, and 19 plant activities and 11 environ- mental components have been used to evaluate the environmental effects of the plant. To solve the EIA problem, two commonly used DEA approaches, called CRS (constant returns to scale) and VRS (variable returns to scale), have been used. The DEA results identified the critical environmental components of the plant that should be considered seriously. Also, drawing the “potential improvement” diagram in the DEA method is an effective tool for determining the high risk activities of the factory and applying them in development plans. Besides, using the VRS model with maximize-output approach showed that some of the plant activities had the most differences with optimal mode and these components should be considered in future development plans. Finally, it can be concluded that, assessing the environmental impacts of the mineral industries with VRS maximize-output ap- proach, is closer to the concept of sustainable development and cost-benefit analysis. 1. Introduction Prediction of environmental impacts of the industrial projects is a key tool for environmental management (Solbär and Keskitalo, 2017). Economic gain and environmental protection, are two basic elements in development planning (Sereshki and Saffari, 2016). Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an important tool for managing the en- vironmental impacts of industrial projects. Also, it is essential to eval- uate the project for the financial and initial feasibility study for estab- lishing an industrial unit (Durden et al., 2018; Jay et al., 2007). Environmental impact assessment is the most comprehensive environ- mental policy tool in the world that is used in the decision making of proposed projects and strategic plans. Although it has been much im- proved since its inception in 1969 in the United States and it still faces many challenges (da Silva Dias et al., 2019). The actual purpose of the EIA evaluation is to identify all positive and negative impacts of an industrial or mineral project on the surrounding environment. Today, EIA is essential for controlling and preventing the environmental issues of industrial and mining activities. The main goal of the EIA experts is to comprehensively examine the effects of project activity and identify its long-term harmful effects to reduce the environmental concerns (Saffari et al., 2017). Since the introduction of the EIA, several evaluation methods have been developed. One of the first methods is the Leopold matrix. Leopold et al. (1971) introduced a matrix to assess the destructive effects of development projects. This matrix examines the impacts of individual project activities on the surrounding environment so that this approach allows the corrective actions according to the amount of impacts of the project (Josimovic et al., 2014). This method is still used because of its simplicity and efficiency (Ashofteh et al., 2017). After that Pastakia and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2020.106389 Received 4 August 2019; Received in revised form 19 March 2020; Accepted 19 March 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author at: School of Mining, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. E-mail address: fdoulati@ut.ac.ir (F.D. Ardejani). Environmental Impact Assessment Review 83 (2020) 106389 0195-9255/ © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T