Assessing sustainability of road projects in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Road construction is a continuously evolving notion and a key player in nation’s economy. It has been identified as causing a range of countless environmental, social and economic impacts. Hence, there is a dire necessity of Sustainability Assessment (SA) in road construction. Many developed countries have their own rating systems for assessing road construction although this is lacking in developing countries. However, a commonly accepted assessment method for road construction over its life cycle is not available up to date. Addressing these gaps, this paper presents a framework for SA in road projects in Sri Lanka pertaining to construction activities associated in road life cycle under the three pillars of sustainability; i.e. Environmental, Social and Economic. A comprehensive literature survey was executed exploring road sustainability impacts and measures globally. An expert survey was carried out under two rounds with three professionals in road construction and sustainability to verify literature findings, and to explore more sustainability impacts and measures in road construction in Sri Lanka. A framework was developed including 10 major road sustainability impacts, 13 sub-impacts and 29 measures in a hierarchical structure. A pairwise comparison was carried out for the elements in the framework distributing 32 questionnaires among professionals. Collected data were analysed using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Analysed results weighted each element with a score resulting “Standard of living (0.2362)” and “Resource usage (0.2228)” as the most significant impacts where “Measures of improving Accessibility (0.1205)” as the most significant measures in the framework.