Abstract Sustainability indicators are increasingly recognized as a useful tool to provide policy information in support of environmental, economic or social improvement. Various approaches to sustainability have also been adopted in universities through the introduction of specific rankings. International rankings are an important communication tool that allows the comparison of universities according to combinations of different appropriately weighed parameters. The GreenMetric World University Ranking is the only worldwide ranking of universities that compares environmental sustainability across various campuses. It uses indicators involving education, research and the environment to evaluate the measures undertaken by universities to develop ecological infrastructures and stimulate improvement. The aim of this work is to analyze the individual indicators and categories used in the GreenMetric ranking in detail to verify whether they are, in fact, useful in assessing the sustainability of universities. Through the implementation of the cluster analysis, based on a selection of identified variables, all campuses were classified in homogeneous groups. The results identify four levels of sustainability and show a strong relationship between the rankings of the different categories (setting and infrastructure, energy and climate change, transportation, waste and water conservation and recycling) and specific aspects for assessing institutional policies. These results are useful information to guide universities in the research of key issues on where to invest time and resources to improve the sustainability of their structures and, therefore, their attractiveness.

中文翻译：

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在世界可持续性排名中对大学进行分类的聚类方法

摘要 可持续性指标越来越被认为是提供政策信息以支持环境、经济或社会改善的有用工具。通过引入特定排名，大学也采用了各种可持续发展方法。国际排名是一种重要的交流工具，它允许根据不同的适当加权参数的组合对大学进行比较。GreenMetric 世界大学排名是唯一一个比较不同校园环境可持续性的全球大学排名。它使用涉及教育、研究和环境的指标来评估大学为发展生态基础设施和促进改善所采取的措施。这项工作的目的是详细分析 GreenMetric 排名中使用的各个指标和类别，以验证它们实际上是否有助于评估大学的可持续性。通过聚类分析的实施，基于选择的已识别变量，所有校园都被归类为同质组。结果确定了可持续性的四个级别，并显示了不同类别（环境和基础设施、能源和气候变化、交通、废物和水资源保护和回收）的排名与评估制度政策的具体方面之间的密切关系。这些结果是有用的信息，可指导大学研究在何处投入时间和资源以提高其结构的可持续性的关键问题，因此，