Sustainability Assessment of Transport Infrastructure Projects: A Review of Existing Tools and Methods

Abstract

Attempts to integrate sustainability in the decision-making process for transport infrastructure projects continue to gain momentum. A number of tools and methodological frameworks are available — such as rating systems, traditional decision-making techniques, checklists, and different evaluation frameworks and models. While these tools are highly valuable, some practical issues remain unsolved. There is also a need for more standardized tools to appraise the sustainability of transport projects. This paper is a presentation of a review on the current assessment tools of sustainability applied to transport infrastructure projects. The preliminary part of the paper is an explanatory and comparative analysis of the tools and methods in terms of their effectiveness to appraise sustainability. The analysis is a critical evaluation of the current state of the art to identify the limitations of existing approaches, point out new areas of research, and propose a sustainability appraisal agenda for the future.

Keywords:

• sustainability
• decision-making
• transport projects
• evaluation methodologies
• rating systems

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Sustainability criteria are defined as the basic fundamentals or principles used to judge the sustainability of transport projects and to compare the alternatives. They can be grouped into different sustainability components (economic/social/environmental).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Investment Bank under The STAREBEI programme. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions presented in this article are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to the European Investment Bank. The authors wish to thank the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, which has funded the SUPPORT Project - EU support mechanisms to promote public–private partnerships for financing TRANSEUROPEAN TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE — [TRA2012-36590]. Period: 1 January 2013–31 December 2016.