Multi-Criteria Life Cycle Approach to Develop Weighting of Sustainability Indicators for Pavement

Shih-Hsien Yang, Jack Yen Hung Liu and Nam Hoai Tran
Additional contact information
Shih-Hsien Yang: Department of Civil Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan City 701, Taiwan
Jack Yen Hung Liu: Department of Civil Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan City 701, Taiwan
Nam Hoai Tran: Department of Civil Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan City 701, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 7, 1-18

Abstract: In the past decade, sustainable practices have been adopted in transportation infrastructure projects to reduce adverse environmental effects. To evaluate the sustainability levels of engineering projects holistically, rating systems have been developed to assess and reward points based on various sustainable best practices (indicators). This study aimed to establish a systematic methodology to weight indicators related to materials and resources most commonly used by various transportation infrastructure rating systems based on their contributions to sustainability. A multi-criteria approach for assessing the indicators based on three criteria, indicator performance, environment, and cost, was designed. The criteria were then used to evaluate the indicators and assessed points based on their contributions toward sustainability. Results revealed that state-of-the-art engineering practices could differentiate weighting of points from the typical linear point increase that is traditionally used. In addition, a maximum cap is crucial to ensure that some indicators do not end up being weighted disproportionately.

Keywords: multi-criteria weighting; life cycle assessment (LCA); indicators; infrastructure rating systems; sustainable transportation engineering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/7/2325/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/7/2325/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:7:p:2325-:d:156319

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().