Tiered Quantitative Assessment of Life Cycle Sustainability and Resilience (TQUALICSR): Framework for Design of Engineering Projects

Abstract

Considerable efforts have been made recently to incorporate sustainable practices into the design of engineering projects (e.g., civil infrastructure) with an aim to minimize their net negative environmental, economic, and social impacts. There have been several tools developed to assess and compare the sustainability of potential design alternatives; however, most of these tools focus on assessing the environmental impacts, with minimal regards to the broader social and economic dimensions. Additionally, the increased occurrence of climate change-related events and impacts have challenged the function of engineered systems and their ability to achieve sustainable development, forcing policymakers and stakeholders to consider resilience in engineering designs and projects. Resilience and sustainability are inseparable, as an engineering system cannot be sustainable if it is not resilient; nevertheless, few tools and frameworks integrate resilience and sustainability assessments at a project level. In this chapter, a tiered quantitative assessment of life cycle sustainability and resilience (TQUALICSR) framework is proposed, with the following key features: (1) integration of resilience and sustainability into a unified assessment framework; (2) a flexible, tier-based selection of tools to assess the environmental, economic, and social impacts of a project and its resilience; (3) integration of interdependencies among the technical, environmental, social, economic, and resilience dimensions; and (4) applicability to any life cycle stage of an engineering project, from planning to decommissioning. The different steps involved in the framework, useful triple bottom line quantification tools, and application challenges and outlook are highlighted.