Sustainability assessment and the revitalization of contaminated sites: operationalizing sustainable development for local problems

Abstract

The problem of contamination of soil and groundwater has only been discussed widely in industrialized countries since the 1970s. Since the 1980s, when the debate on sustainable development began to be taken up in urban and regional planning, soil was increasingly seen as a scarce and non-renewable resource. Consequently, the goal of brownfield redevelopment became an urgent issue in policy circles. Because revitalization of contaminated brownfield areas is characterized by many uncertainties and complex decision-making processes, there is a growing need for generic decision-support systems. In this paper we discuss the development of a systematic approach aimed at assessing different land-use scenarios for a contaminated site in terms of their sustainability value as part of a computer-based module. The overall management system, of which sustainability indicator development discussed in this paper is but one part, supports users in developing a case-specific set of criteria for sustainable development. In this paper, we present and critically discuss this new sustainability assessment module. We describe the different steps of the indicator development process and discuss areas that need to be improved in order to derive answers that reach beyond the field of contaminated site management.

Keywords:

• indicator development
• decision support
• brownfield development
• stakeholder participation

Notes

1. CABERNET is a European Expert network established in 2002 to support the rehabilitation of brownfields within the context of sustainable development by facilitating exchange of experiences, http://www.cabernet.org.uk.

2. RESCUE was a European research project (2002–2005) within which methodologies, strategies and tools for sustainable brownfield regeneration were developed, http://www.rescue-europe.com.

3. Sustainable Management Approaches and Revitalization Tools – electronic (SMART-e) is a web-based decision-support system for developing and evaluating future reuse scenarios for contaminated land, initiated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, http://www.smarte.org.

4. REFINA is a research programme initiated in 2004 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research that scrutinizes strategies for reducing land use as a contribution to sustainable development, http://www.refina-info.de.

5. It represents one research subproject within a major research programme of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres: SAFIRA II. Its focus is on technical solutions and management strategies for investigation and remediation of contaminated areas.

6. Deforestation of rain forests, for example, has an ecological as well as an economic and a social dimension.

7. The original authors of the Helmholtz Concept of Sustainability (Kopfmüller et al. 2001) referred to three generic goals of sustainability (Nachhaltigkeitsziele), subdivided into 15 minimum requirements of sustainability, which they called rules (Regeln). The terminology does not translate well into English. For reasons of clarity, we continuously talk about ‘sustainability goals’, since this is what the requirements refer to.

8. A yardstick is a specific set of criteria that are the result of contextualization of the sustainability norm, following the methodology of the HGF concept.

9. The analysis was conducted with the help of our student assistants Sebastian Bellstedt, Johanna Hilsberg, Philipp Jurke and Markus Märker.