A Framework of Green Growth Assessment for Thailand's Highway Infrastructure Developments

To promote economic growth, investments in infrastructure projects - such as roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and urban mass transit systems - are indeed necessary. However, the growth in infrastructure investment is not without concerns. Transport sector accounts for a large amount of carbon emissions in recent years as the economy continues to expand. This paper presents a new framework of green growth assessment to be used for Thailand's highway infrastructure by combining economic aspects and environmental aspects of the project into a single index. The proposed method is intended to be served as a "green-growth" barometer of major highway projects across Thailand. To demonstrate how the proposed model can be applied in practice, Bangkok's motorway No. 9 is employed as a case study project presented in this paper. The results of this proposed method will be later used to evaluate the green-growth indices of major highways in Thailand. This study may help advance the knowledge and practices of sustainable highway infrastructure developments.