Indicator use in soil remediation investments: Views from policy, research and practice

Abstract

Soil contamination poses a global problem. To address this a lot of scientific progress has been made. However, the development of the economic aspect has been lacking even though the total cost of soil remediation in Europe is estimated to be 119 billion euro. Frameworks and tools are available (for example SuRF-UK framework) to address economic aspects of soil remediation, but an established set of well-defined indicators is currently not available. The introduction of a basic set of indicators for the investment analysis of a soil remediation project, based on an international survey, aims to fill this gap. The basic indicator set contains those indicators that were considered most relevant for an investment analysis by the respondents and includes, among other things, cost description, potential land use after remediation and estimation of human risk. In addition to this basic indicator set, three other indicator sets are defined to address the different needs for information of three large stakeholder groups (research, policy and practice) within the soil remediation sector. An indicator set for practitioners that includes, complementary to the basic indicator set, additional indicators concerning the practical issues of soil remediation projects (e.g. a BATNEEC analysis). For people working in policy, site valuation turned out to be a significant additional theme for an investment analysis, including indicators such as future land value. The indicator set designed to address the preferences of researchers included additional indicators related to financial support, local residents and neighbourhood, and boundaries and uncertainties allowing for a broader but also more detailed overview of the soil remediation project.