Nowadays multi-criteria methods enable non-monetary aspects to be incorporated into the assessment of infrastructure sustainability. Yet evaluation of the social aspects is still neglected and the multi-criteria assessment of these social aspects is still an emerging topic. Therefore, the aim of this article is to review the current state of multi-criteria infrastructure assessment studies that include social aspects. The review includes an analysis of the social criteria, participation and assessment methods. The results identify mobility and access, safety and local development among the most frequent criteria. The Analytic Hierarchy Process and Simple Additive Weighting methods are the most frequently used. Treatments of equity, uncertainty, learning and consideration of the context, however, are not properly analyzed yet. Anyway, the methods for implementing the evaluation must guarantee the social effect on the result, improvement of the representation of the social context and techniques to facilitate the evaluation in the absence of information.
ABSTRACT:To enhance concern for the social aspects of sustainability and to delineate the 7 criteria to be considered at each stage of the life cycle of an infrastructure, this paper aims to 8 determine the relevance of a set of criteria that evaluate social sustainability throughout the 9 life cycle of a public civil infrastructure. This research presents the results of a case study 10 applying the Delphi method to 24 Chilean experts consulted in a series of three rounds. In 11 addition, binomial statistical tests and Kendall's coefficient were used to show the 12 convergence of the experts. Thus, it was identified that of 36 initial criteria assessed at each 13 stage of the life cycle, the consideration of 20 is required at the design stage, 29 at the 14 construction stage, 33 during operation and 27 at demolition. The most relevant criteria, per 15 life-cycle stage, were: "Stakeholder Participation" (design and demolition stages), "External 16Local Population" (design stage), "Internal Human Resources" (construction and demolition 17 stages), "Macro-Social Action" of "Socio-Environmental Activities" (construction stage), and 18 "Macro-Social Action" of "Socio-Economic Activities" (operation stage).
Nowadays, sustainability assessments tend to focus on the biophysical and economic considerations of the built environment. Social facets are generally underestimated when investment in infrastructure projects is appraised. This paper proposes a method to estimate the contribution of infrastructure projects to social sustainability. This method takes into account the interactions of an infrastructure with its environment in terms of the potential for short and long-term social improvement. The method is structured in five stages: (1) social improvement criteria and goals to be taken into account are identified and weighed; (2) an exploratory study is conducted to determine transfer functions; (3) each criterion is homogenized through value functions; (4) the short and long-term social improvement indices are established; and finally, (5) social improvement indices are contrasted to identify the socially selected alternatives and to assign an order of priority. The method was implemented in six alternatives for road infrastructure improvement. The results of the analysis show that the method can distinguish the contribution to social sustainability of different infrastructure projects and location contexts, according to early benefits and potential long-term equitable improvement. This method can be applied prior to the implementation of a project and can complement environmental and economic sustainability assessments.
Nowadays, sustainability assessment tends to focus on the biophysical and economic aspects of the built environment. The social aspects are generally overestimated during an infrastructure evaluation. This study proposes a method to optimize infrastructure projects by assessing their social contribution. This proposal takes into account the infrastructure's interactions with the local environment in terms of its potential contribution in the short and long term. The method is structured in three stages: (1) preparation of a decision-making model, (2) formulation of the model, and (3) implementation of the model through optimization of infrastructure projects from the social sustainability viewpoint. The theory of Bayesian reasoning and a harmony search optimization algorithm are used to carry out the research. The paper presents the application to a case study of a set of alternatives for road infrastructure projects in El Salvador. This approach creates a model of participative decisionmaking. The results show that the method can distinguish socially efficient alternatives from the short and long-term contributions. In addition, the results suggest that some variables are less sensitive to the short and long-term maximization, while others vary their values to improve one objective or the other. The findings are directly applied to a real case. The method can be employed in the infrastructure formulation and prioritization phases and complemented with economic and environmental sustainability assessments.
ElsevierPellicer Armiñana, E.; Sierra Varela, LA.; Yepes Piqueras, V. (2016). Appraisal of infrastructure sustainability by graduate students using an active-learning method. Journal of Cleaner Production. 113:884-896. doi:10.1016Production. 113:884-896. doi:10. /j.jclepro.2015 Appraisal of infrastructure sustainability by graduate students using an active-learning method Appraisal of infrastructure sustainability by graduate students using an active-learning method AbstractCurrently many university programs in the construction field do not take sustainability into account from a holistic viewpoint. This may cause a lack of sensitivity from future professionals concerning sustainability. Academics in construction must endeavor to instill a culture of sustainability in the curricula of their students. Therefore, this study proposes an active-learning method that allows graduate students in the construction field to take into consideration infrastructure sustainability from a variety of perspectives in a participatory process. The students applied an analytical hierarchical process to determine the appraisal degree of each criterion. A cluster statistical analysis was carried out, aiming to identify the profiles that influence decision-making. This method was applied to two classes of graduate students enrolled in the Master of Planning and Management in Civil Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València. This method identified a correlation between the profiles toward sustainability and the characteristics of the chosen infrastructure. It was also found that the method fulfills educational purposes: most of the students obtained more than 65% of the target learning outcomes. This approach promotes awareness and sensitivity to different points of view of the sustainability in a participatory context. It can be replicated in other contexts so as to obtain appraisals regarding various criteria that help enhance decisionmaking.
Assessing the viability of a public infrastructure includes economic, technical and environmental aspects; however, on many occasions, the social aspects are not always adequately considered. This article proposes a procedure to estimate the social sustainability of infrastructure projects under conditions of uncertainty, based on a multicriteria deterministic method. The variability of the method inputs is contributed by the decision-makers. Uncertain inputs are treated through uniform and beta PERT distributions. The Monte Carlo method is used to propagate uncertainty in the method. A case study of a road infrastructure improvement in El Salvador is used to illustrate this treatment. The main results determine the variability of the short and long-term social improvement indices by infrastructure and the probability of the position in the prioritization of the alternatives. The proposed mechanism improves the reliability of the decision making early in infrastructure projects, taking their social contribution into account. The results can complement environmental and economic sustainability assessments.
The construction sector has been heavily impacted by COVID-19 due to the restricted conditions required by construction projects to perform physical activities. Given this context, it is of interest for the industry to identify the impacts that COVID-19 has had on the development of construction projects. However, little is known regarding how the impacts of COVID-19 have affected multiple stakeholders in construction projects and whether there is some interaction among such impacts. This study aims to explore the impacts of COVID-19 and their influence among different construction stakeholders (i.e., engineers and managers, workers, suppliers). This study was enabled by 40 semi-structured interviews that were performed with stakeholders in construction projects in Chile. Content analysis from the interviews led to the identification of categories of impacts and stakeholders, to the development of a cognitive map of the impacts, and to the application of correspondence analysis. Fifteen categories of impacts were identified, and six construction stakeholders were identified as having been impacted by COVID-19. Identifying the causes and effects of the impacts felt by multiple stakeholders revealed that these impacts interacted among each other. Understanding the impacts of COVID-19 on construction stakeholders may facilitate the development of effective mitigation strategies to reduce COVID-19 impacts on the construction sector.
Within the framework of social sustainability, the studies that measure the contribution of houses allocated to the country’s most vulnerable population are limited. This article presents a case study that assesses the contribution of a social housing project to social sustainability in the Region of La Araucanía, Chile. Here, the degree of social contribution for the Amuley Ruka project in Pitrufquén, Region of La Araucanía is determined. In this study, a pre-post assessment was used by triangulating the data obtained in field visits, interviews and document reviews. Thus, appropriate indicators were adjusted to measure multiple evaluation criteria and the measurement scales were standardized. All this makes it possible to determine the vulnerable situation of the beneficiaries, the effects on the context and the criteria to improve. The results obtained clarify the partial and total contribution of the social housing project. It is detected that the criteria “Connectivity and access” and “Family support” do not present significant differences resulting from the project. In addition, the criteria “Community Health and Safety” and “Recreation infrastructure” show a reduction in their contribution with respect to the social housing intervention.
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