Infrastructure Challenges and Way Forwar

Sustainable infrastructure must embrace the current and future challenges and demands of an evolving society and its needs, both in times of conventional use and extreme conditions. This paper presents a three-pronged framework focusing on the functionality-survivability-sustainability aspects for overall sustainability assessment using stormwater infrastructure as its main example, and presents a case study to illustrate how the framework can be used. Existing sustainability assessment tools focus mainly on the functional aspects of environmental, social and economic performance separately, and do not capture the overall issues or changing demands comprehensively. Existing tools also focus on water and wastewater systems, but rarely for stormwater infrastructure. As stormwater infrastructure ages, it must continue to serve growing populations with limited resources. Episodic events such as frequent urban flooding due to climate change complicate the challenges. A sustainable stormwater system must address current as well as future demands, and particularly socio-economic needs. In this paper, the challenges faced by today’s stormwater infrastructure are outlined, and a set of indicators are developed for the three domains of functionality, survivability, and sustainability based on the following three criteria: resource minimization, public health and change management. Thirty-three indicators are identified: nineteen for functionality, eight for survivability and six for sustainability. The indicators can differ depending on temporal and spatial variation. The case study uses selected and relevant indicators to demonstrate how the new sustainability assessment framework can be applied. Finally, the overall sustainability of the system is determined through using a multicriteria assessment.