ICSI 2014: Creating Infrastructure for a Sustainable World

It can be argued that maintenance of road pavements is more critical for the longevity of this public asset as opposed to the actual construction, which tends to attract more attention. In many developing countries, such as Honduras, the absence or inadequacy of funding can undermine any effort to ensure optimal performance of the road over the course of its design life. This paper highlights the current efforts being made to preserve road assets in Honduras and proposes recommendations for this country to obtain a more competitive road network through a study of the best international practices as it relates to maintenance of roads. As of 2012, Honduras had an official road network of 14,648 km, of which only 3,361 km (23%) were paved. Honduras transports virtually all its freight and passengers on roads as a consequence of the abandonment of the rail network coupled with the high cost of air transportation. Accordingly, the operational quality of this mode of transportation is a fundamental factor in the country's economic development. Government agencies responsible for making investments in road construction and maintenance face the continual problem of insufficient funds. In recent years, the funding assigned for maintenance of the road network was less than 2% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Further, overloaded trucks in Honduras became common, because the axle load control stopped operating in 1995 and has never been reactivated. This lack of monitoring and enforcement has caused increased stresses in pavement structures and consequently accelerates failure. Ten years ago traffic counts and evaluations of the physical state of the road surfaces were discontinued as important inputs when designing strategies for road investment. Recommendations are proposed to more effectively utilize limited budgets and reduce vehicular operating costs. These recommendations are based on the international experience in pavement management and evaluation procedures of pavement conditions with high performance equipment. A discussion on the condition of the pavements with the various experts in-country will be presented.

This paper attempts to describe the benefits of using existing railway infrastructure around growing metropolitan cities for addressing urban mobility challenges. Suburban rail services can greatly help alleviate commuting options and meet rising demands for reliable mass transit services into and out from city centers to suburbs and satellite towns. Construction costs would be optimum and construction periods small in comparison with new systems. Increasing capacities with more frequent trains can be done sustainably and without causing disruption to other city facilities and infrastructure unlike road augmentation or building new routes for exclusive track guided rail systems. A proposal for implementing suburban rail services in the city of Bangalore, India (population 9.5 million) has been used as a case study. The socioeconomic benefits that can be derived from such a system include the obviously easier access to city centers by suburbanites, minimizing city road decay due to overloads, address problems of people who are poor (not just in terms of income but also in terms of social exclusion associated with inaccessibility to jobs, schools, health facilities, and social activities that are usually superior within the city) besides adding to the quality and quantity of public transport. It would also help shift many economic development activities away from the city and concentrate new development in nearby satellite towns.

Catastrophic experiences that receive worldwide publicity can include both natural and human-made events. Examples include earthquakes, incidents in chemical plants, fires, tsunamis, explosions, and more, where each type of event can (and has) led to significant loss of life. No nation has been granted immunity from the effects of these types of events, and the international community frequently pulls together to help where itcan. More frequently, however, such events can be less dramatic but can have notable/severe consequences of another type, that is, economic. Learning for the future, and thus, for future generations, is crucial. The functioning of modern societies continues to be increasingly dependent on physical infrastructure. Civil engineering plays a critical role in delivering a diverse range of sustainable infrastructure systems, including building and industrial facilities, transportation, energy, water supply, waste management, and communications systems. The profession also plays a critical role in maintaining the quality, integrity, and longevity of these systems. Society has a right to expect infrastructure that functions well; yet without resilience, that infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable. Traditional approaches of reactive, corrective actions to slow, reduce, and eliminate the impacts of catastrophic events, or prevent them altogether, in many cases have proven to be costly, inefficient, and ineffective. In response, a wide range of constituencies from both within and outside civil engineering has been attempting to define the attributes and characteristics of infrastructure resilience, particularly with integrated/enhanced sustainability features in mind. To establish a direction, in 2011 the Central Government of the United Kingdom published a national infrastructure plan, which keeps infrastructure resilience under review. Emerging research in the United Kingdom indicates that decision makers need to integrate resilience at all stages of the project life cycle, particularly the early funding allocation, planning, and conceptual design phases. More specifically, to be successful in the pursuit of infrastructure resilience, civil engineers, as well as others in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) Industry, need to (1) define, plan, and design for more resilience, (2) procure, construct, commission, operate, and maintain infrastructure with resilience in mind, and (3) supply more building technologies, systems, products, and materials that embody resilience with enhanced sustainability in mind. Topics such as sustainability, globalization, emerging technologies, innovation, and infrastructure resilience benefit from being viewed in an international context. Multiple organizations within the international community have been formally, explicitly, and proactively addressing infrastructure resilience. In the United Kingdom, researchers have asked, What can be done? How can it be done? With what resources can it be done? This paper investigates current approaches to infrastructure resilience in the United Kingdom and proposes practical ideas to stimulate an ongoing, industrywide dialog and debate. This will be of interest to civil engineers and to those in other disciplines in both professional practice and academia, as well as to infrastructure owners and managers.

The Louisiana coast is losing land at an alarming rate. This land loss has resulted in greater damage to infrastructure near the coast, as land and marsh that historically buffered this infrastructure disappears. Infrastructure in Louisiana is critical to the United States for shipping along the Mississippi River and for oil and gas production and import/export. Land loss in Louisiana is the result of years of well-intentioned, but unsustainable, practices. Louisiana is in the initial stages of a 50-year plan (Louisiana's Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast, 2012) to build resilient infrastructure that will work with the natural delta and coastal processes to provide long-term, sustainable coastal protection for the state. Given the projected annualized cost of doing nothing, Louisiana cannot afford not to implement the plan.

The Palm Beach County Water Utilities Department is one of the few utilities in the country to complete the "sustainability cycle" of recycling wastewater effluent, creating fertilizer from biosolids and turning biogas into energy. The utility achieves these sustainability goals at its Southern Region Water Reclamation Facility (SRWRF) located in the central part of Palm Beach County. In addition, to further enhance the sustainability of the utility, the county recently completed one of the largest solar projects in the area. The utility is an industry leader in becoming a green utility and has the mission statement: "Best Water, Best Customer Service, and Best Environmental Stewardship." The foundation of becoming a green utility lies in reducing the environmental footprint through conservation, sustainability, energy efficiency, and greenhouse gas reduction. In addition to its sustainability efforts, the utility promotes conservation through an alternative water resources program, which includes the largest reclaimed water system in southeast Florida. The social benefits of the triple bottom line are further enhanced by created wetlands with a nature center and boardwalks for wildlife viewing.

Investment in the provision or replacement of water infrastructure has historically failed to meet the need by a wide margin. One reason for this has been the historical tendency for water to be underpriced, or not priced at all: this has made it difficult to demonstrate a reasonable return from any investment and difficult to assess risk. To address this issue, Waterfund LLC, assisted by IBM, has created the Rickards water cost index that will track the cost to supply drinking quality water globally, eventually covering the supply underpinning 25% of the globe's GDP. The index, which uses leading edge data-analysis techniques to derive inputs from unstructured data in water agency public documents, represent a novel application of what is sometimes called "big data" to water management. The oil industry states that $100/barrel oil is the value below which capital allocation can earn a return. Given its critical importance in our lives, why does the water industry not have a similar answer to the question, Is the "global water crisis" a resource crisis or perhaps a capital crisis? Precisely because of its critical importance, the water industry has been given a pass on cost transparency by everyone from politicians to Wall Street to economists due to the unimaginable consequences of not having an abundant supply of fresh water. As a result, the subject of water production costs remains largely unexplored, and water has taken a back seat to virtually every other resource in the battle for private investment dollars. The large scale and nonuniformity of water financial data is also a major challenge to creating a precise water finance benchmark; no two water enterprises publish comparable financial statements. Water volumes, interest expense, energy costs, and capital expenditures must first be extracted from unstructured data sets often thousands of pages in length. Then, hidden costs and subsidies must be interpolated and modeled alongside the available information. Complex data challenges such as these are the main barriers to a successful and precise global water cost index. This paper will describe the techniques used to construct the index and how it will be used to enable higher levels of investment in water supplies and water infrastructure. "The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any use-value; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it" - Adam Smith, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776

It has been widely reported that critical and necessary upgrades, operational changes, and expansion of infrastructure systems have fallen behind in meeting society's needs. Desirable or required levels of service and resilience are increasingly compromised because of that lack of investment in the future. Economic losses resulting from traffic congestion, drought impacts to agriculture, cities and businesses, as well as regional impacts from power outages would seem to present a compelling case for government agencies to move expeditiously to deliver reliable and resilient infrastructure systems. Historically, this has generally been the case. However, recent trends including higher levels of environmental protection, wider civic engagement, more expansive regulatory requirements and constrained financial resources, have contributed to decreased performance or extended delivery schedules or shelving of critical infrastructure systems. This paper investigates the potential gains in project delivery that could be realized by applying the triple bottom line principles - namely the social, environmental, and economic elements - of sustainability to the planning, design, construction., and operation of those critical infrastructure systems. Work flow process improvements can assist with the technical definition of infrastructure systems. Sustainability principles can also guide policymakers, interested stakeholders, and community leaders as they promote consensus approaches that are more balanced than the extremes of absolute opposition or with forcing disruptive or damaging infrastructure approaches. The sustainability rubric to project planning has been applied for decades in manufacturing and corporate business settings and more recently in building systems as guided by LEED and Green Globes assessments. Now those principles can be incorporated into public and private infrastructure planning through systems such as Envision as presented by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) and American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). A retrospective case study for a municipal water system is presented to describe how a sustainability framework for the planning and design could be applied throughout the project delivery cycle for infrastructure projects.

Engineers play a unique role in the built world—planning, analyzing, designing, building, and rebuilding things that touch the planet—and therefore have an optimal and natural role in changing the built environment to meet new needs. The 2013 Report Card for America's Infrastructure found that our nation's roads, bridges, and other infrastructure systems are in serious need of repair and modernization. The 16 infrastructure sectors evaluated in the comprehensive report earned a cumulative grade of D+, with the lowest grades of D– going to levees and inland waterways. As the nation faces a daunting backlog of rehabilitation and replacement projects, how do we ensure that we build in a more sustainable way to maximize limited resources? Sustainability strategies were examined in three key infrastructure sectors: transportation, water, and energy. Solutions range from bringing existing infrastructure to a state of good repair, using technology and nonstructural methods to get more capacity out of road lanes, and managing demand through conservation strategies.

Green infrastructure(GI) technologies are becoming a popular decentralized approach to stormwater management and are commonly recognized as a key component of building sustainable urban water systems. Although many U.S. municipalities have encountered barriers to implementing GI, Onondaga County has integrated numerous GI technologies through its "Save the Rain" program into previously unpopular stormwater management plans in only a few years. This paper investigates the sociopolitical and environmental factors that influenced the adoption of GI technologies in Onondaga County. The primary factors include the formation of a policy entrepreneurship coalition, the acceptance of GI as an effective stormwater management practice, and economic opportunities that reduced financial barriers for GI projects. The findings are based on interviews with local leaders and experts, and review of documents and media coverage related to Onondaga County's evolving stormwater management plans. Transformational changes related to these plans, such as ecological regime shifts and adaptive governance strategies, are analyzed.

In 2011 the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through its environmental cooperation - Asia (ECO-Asia) project and Waterlinks, a nonprofit that promotes and supports water operator partnerships in Asia and the Pacific - facilitated a twinning partnership between MWSS (Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System), Manila Water, Maynilad, and Palm Beach/NCAR.

Biochar, a solid byproduct generated during biomass pyrolysis or gasification in the absence (or near-absence) of oxygen, has recently garnered interest for both agricultural and environmental uses owing to its unique physical and chemical properties, such as its high surface area and porosity, and ability to adsorb a variety of compounds, including nutrients, organic contaminants, and some gases. This material is also considered "sustainable," as it can be derived from agricultural wastes and is currently being investigated for carbon sequestration applications and as a soil cover amendment for reduced greenhouse gas emissions from landfills. Ongoing research in our laboratory has shown that biochar can enhance both methane adsorption and subsequent microbial oxidation in soils, making it a promising material to mitigate residual landfill emissions for which gas recovery is not economical or feasible. Physical and chemical properties of biochar are dictated by the feedstock and production conditions (i.e., temperature, conversion technology, and posttreatment processes, if any), which vary widely across commercially produced biochars. In this study, several commercially available biochars are characterized for key physical and chemical properties relevant to the common uses of biochars in environmental applications, with special attention given to PAH and heavy metal content and leachability. A high variability in chemical composition, surface properties, and PAH and heavy metal contents among commercially available biochars was observed, underscoring the importance of prescreening biochars for the presence of PAHs and heavy metals prior to selection as a landfill cover or soil amendment.

The rapid decline in costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and wind power are due largely to expanded manufacturing capacity, technological advances, and an important but mostly overlooked aspect: the modular nature of these systems, which facilitates "plug and play" construction, quick startup, and staged expansion. Modular buildout allows for much smaller startup investment and earlier revenue realization compared to conventional centralized generation plants, a critical consideration in developing countries. Alternatively stated, the modular approach avoids the "too big to succeed" syndrome associated with gigawatt (GW) scale centralized power plants in developing countries where financing constraints result in long gestation periods, projects that never reach fruition, and other "fat tail" outcomes. The reality is that for most of the 1 billion or so people in the world who are not connected to the grid today, the centralized generation model will never work. Rapid expansion of mass production capacity (a "Model-T" approach) is critical to deliver renewable energy (RE) at parity with coal (C), thus, accelerated development of modular systems is an attractive pathway to achieving RE<C but requires a fresh look at economic assumptions underpinning project development. Modular systems can be scaled up for large grid-connected projects and can also be scaled down to provide energy access to bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers. The modular approach can be applied to water supply and wastewater treatment, which have also suffered from the "too big to succeed" syndrome in developing countries.

A procedure is developed to minimize CO₂ emissions for the design of reinforced concrete spread footings subjected to biaxial bending satisfying both geotechnical limit states and structural requirements using a Big Bang-Big Crunch (BB-BC) algorithm. The objectives are to minimize CO₂ emissions and compare designs developed for loading outside of the kern area with analysis procedures when loading is within the kern area. The CO₂ emissions are associated with the extraction and transportation of raw materials; processing, manufacturing, and fabrication of products; and the emissions of equipment involved in the construction process. The CO₂ objective function is subjected to soil bearing and displacement limits, as well as bending moment, shear force, and reinforcing details specified by the American Concrete Institute (ACI 318-11). A design example is presented to compare low-CO₂ emission designs when detachment of the soil from the footing occurs to low-CO₂ emission designs when the entire base of the footing is in compression. Results are presented that demonstrate the effects of different magnitudes of eccentricities on designs.

System resiliency of transportation infrastructure is a growing concern of transportation professionals for both longer term risks associated with climate change and in response to extreme weather events. This paper presents a prioritization framework and case study addressing climate change adaptation for transportation infrastructure. This framework is based on (1) outcomes of a series of engineering assessments to identify implications of incorporating climate variability in projects already completed/underway, (2) development of policies for including risk as part of decision making in planning and engineering, (3) development of methods by which to prioritize improvements to reduce/eliminate risks to the existing network, and (4) development of methods by which to incorporate climate change/extreme weather into decision making for planning and engineering projects. Based on temporal distribution of expected climate change and observed issues, potentially at-risk facilities are identified. This framework also includes design life of transportation facilities, replacement cost values, and an assignment of loss scores for damage/loss value—all of which are utilized in a benefit-cost framework. This general framework can be customized by various agencies by redefining their priorities and addressing risks.

This paper documents the use of the Envision sustainability rating system, developed by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure in 2012 to evaluate the relative sustainability of two rail improvement projects in San Diego County, California, undertaken by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG). One project was at 100% design and the other at the 30% design level. SANDAG's intent in using this tool was to "test drive" this new rating system and to provide a representative baseline on its overall sustainability efforts in designing and constructing projects on the San Diego County portion of the Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo (LOSSAN) rail corridor. In addition, Envision could be used by future project development teams to take a more sustainable approach to project delivery. The methodology helped the project team to quantify measures that can be undertaken to further improve sustainable resilience, like increasing a project's lifespan, reduce overall life-cycle costs, and to provide additional resilience against potential flooding from sea level rise and/or severe storm activity. One project earned Envision credits that would make it eligible for a Silver award, and the other remains to be evaluated. The evaluation process used can be instructive for use on other infrastructure projects.

Climate change is being recognized as a threat to transportation infrastructure and systems. The climate change impacts on transportation systems will be felt short term via episodic-extreme weather events and long-term climatic changes resulting from increased temperatures. These climate change impacts to transportation infrastructure have the potential of causing significant disruption in the movement of goods and services and impacting the overall quality of life to many residents and communities. This paper provides an overview of climate change risk management approaches for transportation systems with a national and international perspective. A literature review was conducted to identify climate change risk management approaches used in the United States, Europe, and New Zealand. Vulnerability analysis strategies, risk management approaches, and climate change adaptation plans for these countries were identified, reviewed, and compared. Similar risk management approaches were identified between countries with differing governmental requirements and regulations. There are a limited number of countries worldwide that have developed risk-based transportation programs to adapt to climate change.

The Georgia Emergency Management Agency/Homeland Security (GEMA/HS) partnered with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) to assess critical infrastructure and community-level resilience from the perspective of various critical infrastructure sectors. The goal was to establish a baseline understanding of current practices to create a picture of the strengths and weakness of the overall system. Based on a literature review, a review of current resilience initiatives, and interviews with statewide and Savannah-area critical infrastructure representatives, eight general recommendations for increasing resilience in Georgia were determined, including strengthening partnerships, identifying and encouraging strong leadership, encouraging trusted and secure information sharing, exercising for resilience by including more mid-managers and operators and inviting participants from across jurisdictions and sectors, encouraging continuity of operations planning, enhancing public awareness and outreach strategies, increasing cybersecurity efforts, and encouraging local governments to perform social vulnerability assessments to anticipate the impact of functional needs and other vulnerable households.

The Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute (COPRI) within the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is developing a Manual of Best Practice to address the inclusion of sea-level change considerations during the design of marine civil works. The committee serves the needs of all stakeholders involved in a marine project and designers and engineers in particular. The manual will provide designers and engineers with systematic methods for incorporating sea-level change projections into their project designs. Studies use different methods and data for calculation and thus global mean sea-level rise estimates for 2100 range from 0.6 to 2.0 m. In addition, planning for marine civil works should consider local sea level variations. In response, this committee is developing recommendations to assist in managing design factors, uncertainty, and to a certain extent, measure implementation. This paper provides an overview of these issues the recommendations that the committee is developing.

To understand and manage risks from climate change and extreme weather, infrastructure designers, owners, and operators need to know where vulnerabilities exist in the system, including how asset-specific vulnerabilities relate to systemwide vulnerabilities. This is harder than it seems: practitioners are faced with several barriers to effectively assess vulnerability, including the resources and time required for detailed studies, limitations in climate and asset information, and challenges in translating climate information at an appropriate level of detail to inform investment, design, and maintenance decisions. This paper presents an indicator-based vulnerability screening approach and discusses practical steps for data collection, scoring and weighting, and validation of results. The benefits of this approach are that it leverages existing information on climate and assets to save time and cost, and relies on metrics that can be applied as part of benchmarking, performance measurement and evaluation, risk assessment, asset management, and prioritization strategies. Moreover, the paper discusses efforts underway to leverage this approach, applications for mainstreaming climate change considerations in infrastructure decision making in developing and developed nations, and limitations of this approach that are ripe for further research.

The climate science community informs us that extremes of climate and weather are changing from historical values and that the changes are driven substantially by emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Civil infrastructure systems traditionally have been designed, constructed, operated, and maintained for appropriate probabilities of functionality, durability, and safety while exposed to climate and weather extremes during their full service lives. Because of uncertainties in future greenhouse gas emissions and in the models for future climate and weather extremes, neither the climate science community nor the engineering community presently can define the statistics of future climate and weather extremes. This paper describes the knowledge available to the civil engineering community, suggests practical approaches for dealing with these uncertainties for current projects, and recommends cooperative research with the climate and social science communities to obtain improved bases for future civil engineering standards and practices.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) owns and operates one of the largest wastewater collection and treatment systems in the world, with many waterfront facilities that are vulnerable to flooding, as was evident during Hurricane Sandy when a number of facilities suffered extensive damage. This vulnerability is likely to increase over time, as climate change projections anticipate more extreme storm surge events and continued sea-level rise in the next several decades. As such, DEP has taken a proactive stance in assessing its infrastructure vulnerabilities and setting forth a framework to implement protective measures. In October 2013 DEP released the NYC Wastewater Resiliency Plan, the nation's most detailed and comprehensive assessment of the risk climate change poses to a wastewater collection and treatment system. Building on previous studies, the DEP's 2013 citywide risk assessment and adaptation study sets forth a cost-effective strategy for reducing flooding damage to wastewater infrastructure and safeguarding public health and the environment. This comprehensive study examined buildings and infrastructure at DEP's 96 pumping stations and 14 wastewater treatment plants, identifying and prioritizing infrastructure that is most at-risk of flood damage. DEP developed a set of cost-effective protective measures that are tailored to each facility to improve resiliency in the face of future flood events. The study revealed a number of key results: All 14 wastewater treatment plants and 60% of pumping stations (58 out of 96) are at risk of flood damage. The study estimates that equipment valued at more than $1 billion is at risk and requires additional protection. The recommended protective measures, totaling $315 million in improvements, are costly but critical. Increased resiliency not only reduces damage costs during a flood event but also enables rapid recovery of full service following a flood event, prevents sewage backup into homes, and reduces the likelihood of release of untreated sewage into the environment. DEP will work to implement the recommended actions to increase resiliency through new design standards and capital projects and is currently seeking funding through the EPA storm mitigation loan program.

In this paper we describe our rationale and preliminary plan for studying the impact of institutional capacity on the development of decentralized stormwater infrastructure. As a critical link in the water cycle, stormwater management is vital to the health of human beings and ecosystems, especially with continued rapid urbanization. In many cases, decentralized stormwater management (e.g., bioretention areas, green roofs, and permeable pavements) is technically and economically preferable to more centralized networks of pipes, channels, and treatment plants. Yet, even when they appear better, decentralized approaches are not always used. Institutional capacity, the ability to perform required tasks, of the various infrastructure institutions may help explain this missed opportunity. Drawing on the literature, we will study institutional frameworks within which stormwater management projects are developed. Questions guiding our proposed research include the following: To what extent are existing institutional barriers inhibiting decentralized stormwater management? How do these differ (e.g., between developed and developing countries and between corporations and communities)? Our hope is that a better understanding of the relationship between institutional capacity and decentralized approaches will improve stormwater management decisions. For example, we see potential to learn from other cultures to identify ways to encourage acceptance of decentralized stormwater in the United States.

International construction joint ventures (ICJVs) have been widely used in large-scale infrastructure projects all over the world. Since the 1980s Singapore has experienced the use of ICJVs in underground rail projects. This study aims to assess the risks associated with the underground rail ICJVs in Singapore. To achieve this objective, a comprehensive literature review was carried out, producing a list of 27 risks. Categorizing them into internal, external, and project-specific risks, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 33 contractors to collect the likelihood of occurrence and magnitude of impact of risks, and using the data, risk criticalities of each risk were calculated. Based on the risk criticality values, risks were ranked within and across the three categories. The analysis result reported "disagreement on some conditions in contract" as the most critical risk. In addition, project specific risks obtained the highest risk criticality value. With the help of this study, ICJV partners can identify the most critical risks and thus develop risk mitigation measures. Also, the findings from this study provide a comprehensive picture of risks for the companies intending to participate in underground rail ICJVs in Singapore.

In this paper, performance of a slurry microtunneling machine used for Tehran Sewage network project is presented. The total project route is 3,855 m and the polymer concrete pipes with 1,400 mm, 1,600 mm, and 1,800 mm diameters are used in this project of which 56% has been completed up to now. This paper introduces a pipe jacking project during excavations in a specific geological condition that caused many obstacles. Some pipes were broken in different positions during crossing this specific geological condition, and many problems were created for the project when faced with huge stone. In addition, crossing boulder layers led to extensive damage for machines and cutter heads and increased project implementation costs. In continuing crossing through this specific geological context, huge boulders in front of the machines blocked the way completely, and the remaining work was forced to be performed by the hand shield method. Also creating a handmade tunnel was a new obstacle that the project team passed through step by step. In this paper all obstacles are reviewed by considering sustainability parameters. Increasing sustainability of the pipeline is mentioned in all parts of the project to find the best way to resolve impossibilities. This project shows real challenges to find the best way for solvingobstacles of such microtunneling projects until the contractor is successful.

When a master planned community's mitigation measures required implementation in an adjacent community, that community weighed in as to how those measures would actually be put in place. A community-driven design took more than 2 years to take shape at monthly public community planning group meetings (many of which included the developer and some of which included city staff). The community applied many sustainability principles in the project design, including multimodal connectivity between communities. The installation of pedestrian-scale lighting was one of the most prominent and community-advocated project features. The implementation of the project's pedestrian-scale acorn lights became a challenge when city maintenance was not available due to a technicality in the city's maintenance contracting (i.e., the acorn lights were deemed an ornamental feature and not a city standard). Also, the street's location was outside of the nearest Maintenance Assessment District (MAD) boundary. Therefore, the city requested that the project proponent install the cold and unsophisticated looking standard "cobra" style light fixtures ubiquitous in today's urban landscape. The community was persistent, and the developer was patient enough to successfully navigate through the city's complicated planning, design, and permitting process. Ultimately, the resilient neighborhood triumphed and got the acorn style lights installed using a creative maintenance financing mechanism and thus maintaining the neighborhood's civil and aesthetic pride.

Despite the broadly based effort for expanding sustainable outcomes on the transportation and infrastructure front, long-established regulations and "ways" often run contrary to the desired outcome. One of the biggest offenders in this category is, surprisingly, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), not as it was written in law but how it has come to be promulgated, administered and practiced, especially at the project level. On projects large and small, well-intended "environmental clearance processes" so firmly in place and having their root in NEPA are often significant hindrances to moving the sustainability success meter and can skip past untapped empowering opportunities that would provide significant net sustainability benefit. It is curious how closely related NEPA and sustainability are related philosophically and how far apart they often exist in practice. This paper speaks to how NEPA and all its subcategories (down to the "permit" level), intended to protect and enhance the environment, often are applied unknowingly to the contrary, and makes suggestions about what might be done to make NEPA a better performer on the sustainability front.

From a public perspective, infrastructure investments are made to serve societal needs, thus the true measure of efficacy becomes their net effect on the triple bottom line (TBL) of economy, environment, and society. The perspective lent by the recently published NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 4: Sustainability as an Organizing Principle for Transportation Agencies "Maturity Model" provides a useful platform for assessing sustainability rating tools in this light. This paper reviews existing and emerging sustainability analysis methods using this construct and demonstrates how a unifying approach using dollar equivalents can be of particular utility in making a business case for societal investment.

In 2013 the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) undertook a study to identify and evaluate alternative delivery methods to advance high-capacity transit expansion projects in the Interstate 20 (I-20) corridor, the Clifton corridor—a major job and activity center with no direct access to existing rail transit and the regional freeway system—and the GA 400 corridor. The study resulted in the identification of the preferred delivery method and implementation plan for each of these corridor projects. This paper details the consensus reached for the three MARTA projects selected for implementation, the sources of funding for the financial plan, and the preferred project delivery method. To accomplish this effort, five major tasks were undertaken which define the schedule, financial plan, and implementation method for the I-20 East Heavy Rail Transit (HRT) corridor, the Clifton corridor light rail transit (LRT), and the GA 400 HRT projects. Of the numerous project delivery methods obtained from prior research and case studies, Design-build-finance, maintain (DBFM) was deemed to be the most appropriate method for both I-20 East HRT and Georgia 400 HRT, and design-build-operate-finance-maintain (DBFOM) was deemed to be the most appropriate delivery method for Clifton corridor LRT.

In 2010 the government of India announced the Jawaharal Nehru National Solar Mission (NSM), an ambitious program aimed at rapidly increasing India's solar energy utilization. The NSM's main goals are to commission 20 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale grid-connected capacity by the year 2022 and create an indigenous concentrating solar power (CSP) industry and supply chain. In less than 4 years, the mission has already made significant steps toward achieving its goal, raising capacity from 30 MW to more than 2,600 MW. Based in part on this initial success, a recent World Bank report argues that India is well poised to be a global leader in solar energy. The NSM serves as an important example of large-scale commercial renewable energy (RE) development supporting a broader goal of inclusive economic development. This paper discusses the NSM, describing the national development context, policy approaches and business models, and technology development. The paper also summarizes the progress of major projects, and discusses future challenges to the solar mission.

With more than 15 million inhabitants in an area of some 360 sq km, Dhaka emerges as one of the rapidly growing, densely populated, congested, and polluted mega-cities in the world today. Dhaka's transportation system is road based, and transport infrastructure is substantially inadequate with approximately 7% land dedicated to transport infrastructure. Despite the tremendous demands for public transportation services, Dhaka is poorly served by only a bus-based system, and government has yet to articulate strong policies, regulations, and investment commitments in this sector. The Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC), a poorly funded government agency, provides bus service covering only a small area of the large metropolis. Privately owned and operated bus transit providers are very fragmented and unorganized small companies that provide inadequate and very poor quality of service. The resulting effect is a degraded mobility for the dwellers that severely hampers livelihoods, economic growth, and productivity. The focus of this paper is to addresses the scopes and opportunities for the government and private sectors to participate in the development of a sound public transportation system from organizational, operational, and investment (e.g., funding and financing) prospective. As such, the paper critically examines various organizational settings, as well as funding and financing options and mechanisms from local socioeconomic and governmental contexts, and makes recommendations accordingly. The paper suggests that the national government should focus on enacting appropriate policies and regulations to establish an umbrella organization that would ensure seamless transit service across jurisdictions and consolidate/integrate all service providers. Finally, the paper discusses the opportunities for the private transit providers to participate in the operations of routes and systems under a public and private partnership framework.

Historical districts are one of the most valuable elements of cities that promotes their identity. Elements, buildings, formation mode, and traffic networks of each historical district reflect the social life of the city's inhabitants. The attention and desire of new generations to know about the lives of their ancestors and the history of primogenitors, as well as getting acquainted with other nations' history increases development of tourism. This makes us want to study the history and identify old neighborhoods and historical places, as well as attempt to keep and maintain them as the heritage of the ancestors. By this we perform our duty for new generations. If disregarding old valuable buildings, lack of attention to historical texture could lead to destruction of the culture and identity of a society. By increasing development of tourism in the world and tourism-oriented economy, restorations and resurrection of historical districts have gained more attention in most countries. Improvement and resuscitation of these districts play a great role in their dynamism and survival, as well as providing income via attraction of tourists. Also, it is possible to use the income from tourism for restorations and development of infrastructures to reachurban sustainable development. Also in this paper Baku's Icheri Sheher and the historical cities of Lahij and Agsu in the Azerbaijan Republic are introduced as successful examples in this field.

Since 2010 more than 1,100 electric vehicle (EV) charge points have been installed in North East England (NE) through the UK government-subsidized Plugged in Places scheme. In parallel, more than 65,000 EV journeys were studied through the Switch-EV trial. Public subsidies covering the operation of EV recharging infrastructure are now coming to an end in the region, which is likely to affect EV drivers recharging behavior. It is, however, unlikely that the introduction of fees for recharging at a level that EV drivers are willing to pay will enable infrastructure owners to recoup their costs using conventional business models. Therefore, making the financial case for the provision of public recharging infrastructure is still difficult. A social and environmental accounting framework may provide crucial information to enable organizations to understand the wider value provided by recharging infrastructure and its services, thereby opening up alternative business models. This paper gives an overview of the findings from these two projects and comments on the early changes observed as a result of the reduction in subsidies.

At first glance, project selection decision making in construction companies dealing with life-cycle oriented and equity-intensive projects is dominated by intuition rather than structured quantitative processes. In contrast, companies from other business fields (e.g., institutional investors) that are also dealing with these projects are successfully using quantitative instruments to support their project selection processes. The objectives of this paper are to analyze if the assumption that intuition guides project selection processes in construction companies can be justified, and to investigate how this process can be enhanced. To meet these objectives, three main aspects are discussed. First, the state of practice in the construction industry is outlined by showing a practical example of a project selection process that is currently being applied by an international construction company. Second, the practically applied project selection process is assessed critically, and improvement potentials are outlined. Finally, the concept of a quantitative project selection model for life-cycle oriented projects in the construction industry is presented. This paper represents one of the first steps of a research project that aims to develop a quantitative project selection model, which will enable construction companies to select projects suitable to their specific profile.

Urban sprawl has become a common development pattern in the United States despite historical precedent that compact, mixed-use development offers a variety of uses and activities beneficial to users. One example of compact, mixed-use development is the Mueller Airport redevelopment project in Austin, Texas. A multidisciplinary group of seven graduate students from Texas A&M University College of Architecture and the Department of Civil Engineering conducted a study to create design guidelines for the Colony Park master plan, another compact, mixed-use community in Austin. Phase I attempted to determine and measure the site components found within the Mueller neighborhood that promote or hinder an active living lifestyle. Phase II of the project reviewed the information and data acquired in Phase I and applied the results to create design guidelines. Focusing on the health aspects, the team created four groups of guidelines regarding land development patterns; parks, greenways, and open spaces; street systems; building design; and urban design.

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) use information technology to improve the safety and efficiency of surface transportation mobility. Emerging cities that are still in the early phases of infrastructure deployment have an opportunity to leapfrog directly to ITS applications that have already been proven to be successful elsewhere. One challenge, however, is lack of availability of real-time traffic data, which are important for the planning and monitoring of most ITS applications in these developing cities. This paper describes how data collected from mobile phones and analysis techniques from the new field of social physics—which is defined as the modeling of human behavior through aggregation of big data—could be used to respond to this challenging lack of useful data. Few studies have indicated that use of cell phone data and application of social physics might help overcome the lack of data obstacle to ITS deployment in cities of emerging economies. Although further study is needed, widespread cell phone usage and the corresponding GPS data suggest other emerging cities may benefit from similar approaches. This paper discusses the potential of integrating cell phone data with social physics for providing the real-time traffic data for ITS applications in cities that would benefit from it the most.

The purpose of this paper is to outline strategies of sustainable stormwater management design and innovation for private developments and public infrastructure projects in urban areas. This paper will focus on urban stormwater management, with several examples of private and public projects recently completed that implement sustainable stormwater management design. Through examination of specific projects this paper will assist the readers in understanding current local trends for sustainable stormwater management, provide information on local agency requirements for their implementation, and foster a discussion of techniques to change the current way of thinking in their application in public and private infrastructure projects. This paper is based on the authors' experience as an engineer and designer of sustainable stormwater management systems nd provides review of current literature addressing sustainable stormwater management as well.

If infrastructure is considered the basic physical and organizational structure needed for the operation of a society, how will the rapidly urbanizing centers in the developing world, many of which have large informal communities (i.e., slums), provide it? Various tools exist that assist engineers in the design and evaluation of sustainable project features, but innovation and long-term acceptance of the systems are lost if the unique cultural characteristics and resource constraints are not used as a refractive lens prior to project considerations. In this paper, a framework is presented within the context of cultural and resource constraints to assist the successful adaptation and application of existing sustainable infrastructure evaluation tools. The framework recognizes that an individual project shares space in a hierarchical spectrum of development unique to each city, characterized by multiple influences and motivations at different scales within social, natural, and built systems.

To meet the global challenge of infrastructure provision for 6 billion urban residents by 2050, it is imperative to incorporate sustainability and resilience as key attributes for infrastructure development/rehabilitation. However, there is no robust approach available to decision makers to explore whether there are tradeoffs between sustainability and resilience or they are complementary. This paper presents an approach to identify the sustainable and resilient zone of urban infrastructure development. We demonstrate the efficacy of the approach through a case study on seismic retrofit of a potable water distribution system in California. The approach along with the case study provides us with a few key insights. First, while there is an apparent trade-off between sustainability and resilience, as increasing resilience increases capital investment; they are complementary when conceived from a life-cycle perspective. Second, there indeed exists a sustainable and resilient zone of planning and design, where both sustainability and resilience can be optimized together.

Cities are growing at a rapid pace, and as such they arethe main stakeholders through which global sustainability can be reached. To this end, cities have to improve the sustainability and resilience of the infrastructure systems on which they rely. The infrastructure systems are akin to ecological systems in that they are interconnected and transfer resources between each other, as well as with the environment. The concept of infrastructure ecology can be used to examine how infrastructure systems within a city interact. In this study we analyzed the impact that a combined heat and power system, which consists of an air-cooled microturbine and an air-cooled absorption chiller, can have on the energy and water for energy requirements of a medium-sized office building. The microturbine and absorption chiller are used to supply the thermal load, which consists of heating, hot water, and cooling loads of the building with the boiler and the absorption chiller meeting any loads not met. We looked at the partial loads of five microturbine systems that ranged in capacity from 30 to 150kW, and varied their outputs from 10 to 100%. We found that running the largest CHP system at 100% will not meet the entire electrical load of the building but will produce 10 times the thermal output required by the small office building. The "water for energy" savings can be reduced to almost zero by the 150kW turbine running at 100%. The 150kW turbine at 100% mitigates the "water for energy" of a building with similar characteristics, if allowed to sell excess electricity produced to the grid. Further analysis is being done to look at the emissions and economic impacts of these CHP systems.

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, with more than 15 million people within its area of 360 square km, has emerged as one of the most congested, unsafe, and polluted cities in the world today. The capital city relies on its road based transportation system. However, the roads of Dhaka are not well planned, designed, and operated to meet the dwellers mobility and accessibility needs. A major portion of Dhaka's some 1868 km of roadways has no sidewalks and where the sidewalks do exist, they are very narrow, poorly maintained, and disjointed or broken. Buses are the only form of mass transit mode in Dhaka, and bus operators are mostly privately owned fragmented and unorganized companies. They provide substantially inadequate and very poor quality of bus service. For its very existence as a mega-city, Dhaka needs to develop a healthy transportation system to support its existing population as well as to maintain a sustained growth. Given the status-quo, this paper addresses six critical issues (e.g., transportation infrastructure and pedestrian, public transportation, growth management and control, education and research, governance and institutions, and funding and financing), and needs in light of developing sustainable transportation systems for Dhaka metropolitan city.

Improvements to 21st Street in Paso Robles, California, combine drainage improvements with stormwater treatment and groundwater recharge on land that was once a part of the nearby Salinas River. The Complete/Green Street, the first of its kind in Paso Robles, uses bioretention, pervious pavers, open-channel draining, and infiltration channels to clean and capture runoff while minimizing flooding during storm events and preserving the pavement. The newly designed streetscape also improves the overall experience of using the street by adding trees, traffic-calming features, and bicycle lanes. In a region that is currently experiencing a historic water shortage, the 21st Street design provides a model for flood control, urban runoff treatment, and groundwater recharge.

Today, less than 10% of the world's urban population lives in African cities. By the end of this century that ratio is on track to swell to more than a third of the world's total (a growth of 2.2 billion urban residents). Today, just seven of the world's 100 largest cities are in Africa, by 2050 that will increase to 21, and by 2100, 40 of the world's 100 largest cities are expected to be in Africa and five of the world's largest 10 cities will be in Africa, each with more than 50 million residents. In addition to the $20 trillion needed over the next 40 years to build the cities for more than 2 billion people, by 2040 Africa also needs the equivalent of about 600,000 engineer graduates per year to design and manage the services underpinning these cities. When assessing Africa's urbanization trends and the acute need for finance, stability of macroeconomic and social conditions, institutional strengthening, efficient urban form, and capacity - this paper asserts that a critical need is capacity, especially domestic engineering capacity. The scale of Africa's capacity needs will necessitate new models of collaboration and urban management.

The City of Los Angeles, with a population of more than 4 million people, covering an area of more than 400 sq mi, is in a semiarid region with a Mediterranean climate where local rainfall occurs over the course of a handful of storm events between October and May of each year. As such, the infrastructure has been developed to import water from Northern California and the Colorado River to provide water supply and to route storm flows from the developed lands in the city to the Pacific Ocean rapidly and efficiently. This infrastructure has resulted in the development of one of the world's megacities as defined by the University of Southern California's Center on megacities. Although the city enjoys protection from flood risks and a dependable water supply of imported water, the receiving waters within the city suffer from impairments, and numerous total maximum daily load (TMDL) regulations are being promulgated, compelling the city to improve the quality of its stormwater runoff to lower the pollutant discharges from its urban streetscapes. In addition, the imported water supplies that the city enjoys are expected to not be expandable and, with impending climate change modifying Sierra snowpack storage and statewide meteorology, may decrease with time. To meet both challenges, the city has put in place water management programs to reduce reliance on imported water supplies and to prevent the discharge of pollutants onto and from its streets and storm drain systems. The program is moving the city toward water sustainability and is being termed as the Green-Blue City of Los Angeles Water Management Program. The program consists of several elements: • A low impact development ordinance requiring most new and redevelopment to retain, infiltrate, evapotranspirate, and/or use onsite the volume of water from the 85^th percentile storm. This represents most of the storm events that occur and the largest storm expected to occur in most years. • An enhanced watershed management planning program where regional and distributed projects are being planned to capture and infiltrate, evapotranspirate, 2/11 and/or use the volume of water from the 85th percentile storm from areas that do not have such systems on private parcels. • A $500 million voter-approved bond-funded program to build capital projects throughout the city to capture and use or treat urban runoff and stormwater. This bond fund is referred to as proposition O and was passed in 2004. Since passage of the measure, the funds have been allocated to projects, and most of those projects have been built. Most of the projects have multiple benefits derived from the use of green stormwater infrastructure. The projects include: ○ South Los Angeles Wetland Park Project ○ Cesar Chavez Recreational Complex ○ Hansen Dam Recreational Area Parking Lot and Wetlands Restoration ○ Echo Park Lake Rehabilitation Project ○ El Sereno Parking Grove ○ Cabrito Paseo Walkway and Bike Path ○ Los Angeles Zoo Parking Lot ○ Rory M. Shaw Memorial Wetlands Park (formally Strathern Wetlands) ○ Wilmington Drain Multiuse Project ○ Machado Lake Ecosystem Rehabilitation Project ○ Rosecrans Recreation Center Stormwater Enhancements • Development of standard plans and specifications for green streets features for new and redevelopment and for street right of way improvements. • Development of a recycled water master plan with goals of more than doubling the amount of wastewater recycling with drinking water aquifer recharge as a significant element. • Development of a stormwater capture master plan with goals of capturing local stormwater for recharging drinking water aquifers or direct use where feasible throughout the city.

The city has been recycling wastewater since 1979 when it began providing tertiary treated wastewater for nonpotable use in the Griffith Park Area. Prior to that time, in the 1960s the city elected to invest in wastewater treatment upstream within its collection system network so that it could divert those wastewater flows to customers rather than expanding its terminus treatment capacity. Since then the city has expanded its recycled water program and currently produces and distributes approximately 19,350 acre-ft/year (afy). This water is used primarily for irrigation and serves city public parcels, as well as some private customers.

The City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation Watershed Protection Division is the division responsible for compliance with the MS4 NPDES permit, which now includes a requirement that the city submit a watershed management plan to show the steps the city will take to cut runoff pollutants to meet waste load allocations and water quality objectives.

This paper covers more of the proposition O and related green infrastructure projects that provide a water quality and water supply benefit. Many provide other benefits, such as habitat restoration, recreation, aesthetics, urban heat island reduction, and potential community revitalization as well.

In 2007 the City of Los Angeles published a master plan for revitalizing the Los Angeles River corridor. This plan showed a vision for modifications to the river to achieve multiple benefits and revitalize the land around the river. The Los Angeles River along the planning corridor is generally concrete lined, either along the bottom and sides or along the sides. Adjacent to the river are industrial properties—many of which are underutilized—railroad alignments, and streets. The general planning vision was to modify channel cross sections where possible to reduce water velocities, allow for retention of water to provide recreational and habitat spaces, acquire adjacent property to provide attractive recreational features to increase activities, and provide planning guidance for private development of other parcels that would revitalize the river corridor. In total 32 miles of river corridor are within the revitalization plan.

Characterized by high-level, multiple hierarchy, and dynamical structure, cities are typical examples of complex systems that are combinations of components acting together to perform specific objectives and have many nonapparent and little understood characteristics. This paper describes the development of a forecasting model named the emergy-based urban dynamic model, capable of accurately simulating the observed resource consumption, economic growth, and environmental impact of Dalian from 2000 to 2050. This model differs from previous urban emergy models by monitoring the negative effects to human well-being and ecosystem integrity in the developing urban systems. Statistical information and calibration were also considered in this dynamic emergy accounting. This study advances the temporal dynamic principles of emergy accounting through integrating upstream and downstream evaluation methods to quantify the environmental impact by addressing specific damages to human health and ecosystem's integrity and by linking such impacts to a supplyside environmental cost evaluation.

This paper aimed to identify the effect factors of carbon emissions and water consumption of the urban manufacturing industry with Dalian city of China as a case study. We selected 29 Dalian manufacturing industrial sectors, and collected the statistical data of energy and water demand from 2006 to 2010 to calculate the carbon emission intensity and water consumption. All of these 29 industry sectors could be grouped into three industrial types of labor-intensive, capital-intensive, and technology-intensive industries. The carbon intensity and water intensity during this period were calculated, and LMDI (Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index) method was used to identify the effects of economic output, industry structure, carbon intensity (or water intensity) on the total carbon emissions (or water consumption) from Dalian's manufacturing industry. The results showed that economic output is the main driving force of increase of both total carbon emission and total water consumption, and optimization of the manufacturing industrial structure will contribute to reduce both of them.

Both water shortage and water pollution issues pose challenges for healthy living and economic growth. Tianjin, one of the biggest cities in North China, has experienced water shortage problem for many years, while the water pollution problem became more severe recently due to rapid urban development and a fast-growing economy. The recycling and reuse of gray water has attracted people's attention. In this research, two categories of gray water, namely stormwater and effluents of wastewater treatment plant, were studied. The issues of storage, further purification, and distribution for reuse were addressed in this study. Water recycling and reuse require integrated approaches for its collection, purification, storage, and distribution. The recycling and reuse of gray water also need to meet certain water standards. The standards increase the challenge for the design, operation, and management of the gray water recycling and reuse system. This research proposed a framework to employ coupled modeling tools SWMM + WASP + SUBWET to model the complex processes involved in the water recycling and reuse system. The coupled modeling framework addressed both the water quantity and quality issues simultaneously. This framework was applied to the aquatic ecosystem restoration project in Tianjin Airport Economic Area (TAEA), which includes a surface wetland for stormwater retention and purification, as well as a series of subsurface wetlands for WTP effluents recycling, purification, redistribution, and reuse. SWMM was used as main engine to simulate runoff and flow in streams and lakes, as well as the flow in the surface wetland. WASP was used to simulate the optimal hydraulic retention time in the surface water wetland in order to reach the surface water standard, whereas SUBWET was used to simulate the optimal hydraulic retention time in the subsurface wetland to meet the water quality requirement. The coupled modeling tools have successfully applied to the design and control of the constructed wetland including surface wetland and the subsurface wetlands. Seasonal variation of water quantity and quality are evaluated to ensure a sound design and a sustainable ecosystem.

A study of the integrated EHBR system was conducted to investigate the performance of the system for treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater over 3 years. After 3 years of operation, the integrated EHBR system presented excellent ability of COD removal and notable impact resistance. The hydrolysis/acidification process could remove 7.2% of COD, 38.6% of TN, and 9.5% of TP. The removal efficiencies of COD, NH₄⁺-N, TN, TP, and SS in the EHBR process were 85.5, 96.2, 71.1, 72.5, and 81.1%, respectively. After postprocessing with activated carbon adsorption, the effluent of integrated treatment EHBR system kept stable with COD below 200 mg/L, NH₄⁺-N below 5 mg/L, and TP below 3 mg/L. The integrated EHBR system could effectively and stably treat the high-loading mixed pharmaceutical wastewater from the high-tech pharmaceutical R&D building in Tianjincity of China, and the effluent quality could meet the wastewater discharge standard.

The rapid development of China's ecocities is in accordance with all of the different stages of the indicator system support. This paper provides a breakdown of the different stages of ecocity development and explains the seven representative indicator systems. This is done through comparative analysis of the contents, different changes in resources, the environment, and the change in economic and social objectives. This will reflect the future trends and the characteristics of China's ecocity development.

The Urban Waters Federal Partnership (UWFP) was initiated in 2011 and is comprised of an innovative coalition of 14 federal agencies that focus on both natural resources and economic development. The UWFP's purpose is to increase collaboration across the federal government and with local partners to revitalize polluted urban waterways in underserved cities nationwide. Its goal is to improve environmental quality and local economies. To date, 18 partnerships have been created in diverse watersheds and urban environments. Restoring these highly impacted aquatic ecosystems and adjacent communities requires integration of aquatic science, social science, socioeconomic knowledge, and engineering. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the UWFP to the engineering community and provide an opportunity to network with these interdisciplinary and urban-based partnerships. As a case study, the Delaware River Urban Waters Partnership will be a focus of this paper and presentation.

Based on the current research progress of indicator system for sustainable development and the characteristics and development trends of the ecocity's construction around the world, the study establishes a sustainable development indicator system for green blocks in ecocities, including elements selecting, concrete contents determining, strategies, measurement, and correction of the indicator. Meanwhile, through questionnaire surveys, this research summarizes the weights of sustainability indicators in green blocks, which may provide a scientific and effective guidance for the planning and construction for ecocities and puts forward feasible ecological design strategies of green blocks.

Urban is a typical socioeconomic-natural complex ecosystem dominated by human activities. Rapid urbanization has brought a wide array of entwined and intricate ecological and environmental problems. Traditional urban infrastructure fails to deal with current urban environmental problems. In this paper we suggested the concept of urban ecological infrastructure based on analysis and induction of the urban environmental problems and its origins. We identified and compared the logic hypothesis of the related concepts on urban ecological infrastructure. Urban ecological infrastructure refers to the engineering facilities that can provide basic ecological services for urban production and consumption activities. It is a kind of public service system to ensure the sustainable development of physical and social ecological process including physical eco-infrastructure and social eco-infrastructure. Last the construction and management of ecological infrastructure are discussed.

The objective of this project was to enhance the lake sustainability by dredging the lake bottom sediments transported by surface runoff and improve the drainage facilities of the adjacent areas to collect the runoff. Compacted stone columns (SC) were installed within the shoulder of State Highway 1 adjacent to Mountain Lake in the City of San Francisco. The purpose of the ground mitigation was to densify the subsurface soils below the roadway shoulder and stabilize the western slope of the lake during the dredging, as well as for long-term seismic ground motion. This paper presents the experiences gained from the design and construction of this project. This method was selected over the conventional structural and other ground mitigations involving cements or other chemically processed construction material to preserve the lake natural environments. The SCs were placed in holes formed by a self-penetrating vertically vibrating probe of a heavy steel casing into the ground through bottom feed. The impact of the installation was controlled through monitoring the ground movements by telltales installed along the edge of the adjacent road and ground vibration by seismographs. The subsurface soils densification around the SCs was evaluated through cone penetration testing (CPT) performed before and after the SC installations. A total of 393 SCs were installed to depths varying between 12 ft to in excess of 40 ft successfully. Ground settlements in range of 0.1 to 7.2 in. and vibration with sum peak particle velocity (PPV) from 0.1 to in excess of 1.35 in./s were recorded during the SC installation, causing hairline cracks and minor faulting on the adjacent roadway. This project demonstrates that geotechnical engineering practice has knowledge and tools to help design and construct sustainable civil projects.

This study focuses on selecting the most sustainable foundation system based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) and sustainability assessment of alternate deep foundation systems, specifically piles and caissons, over their design life. Sustainability evaluation of alternate deep foundations is performed using triple bottom line—environmental, economic, and social impacts—and by considering various life-cycle stages that cover raw material extractions, construction, maintenance, and demolition efforts. For design purposes, subsurface soils, factor of safety against bearing capacity and allowable settlement for both foundations are considered to be the same. Technical designs of both systems are developed based on bearing capacity, both primary and secondary settlements and structural integrity. The LCA is conducted to assess potential environmental impacts, such as global warming, acidification, and smog associated with the concrete and steel production, along with the diesel used for transportation and on-site machinery due to mineral extraction and refining, and required energy inputs for processing. Subsequently, economic evaluation and social impact analyses are performed and the results of analyses are compared. For the site-specific conditions considered, it is concluded that a caisson is more sustainable foundation option than a pile foundation in terms of environmental, economic, and social aspects over its design life.

The aim of this research was to explore potential benefits and challenges of adopting green building rating system on a global level. A building information modeling (BIM) of an illustrative building was developed and situated in different international locations with the goal of representing varying climate types, economic conditions and energy sources. The base BIM was individually changed to meet local codes and reasonable heating and cooling systems while in compliance with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Life-cycle environmental impacts related to energy use with electricity generation mix were calculated. Discrepancies were observed in the results between the different sites with differences clearly increased with more diversified energy sources. Range of variation in equivalent CO₂ emissions was more than 10,000 tons for the same building and the same level of LEED certification. We explored the need for LEED to require buildings with higher environmental impacts to achieve higher levels of energy performance based on associated impacts.

The world's urban population surpassed the nonurban population for the first time in 2009. This marks what has been a steady global shift of providing more food to places it is not grown. Because food accounts for more than 10% of the carbon footprint for the typical American city, this study adopts a social-ecological-infrastructural systems framework, a large component of which is recognizing urban activities and sectors belonging to infrastructure inside and outside the urban boundary. This is a key way to examine the embodied, life-cycle properties of the food we eat in cities. Preliminary results of scenarios of land use change and vegetable production for both distant farmland and urban settings found that shifts resulting from urban vegetable production are favorable in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and soil organic carbon. The results to date indicate that state and local policy could remove hurdles to urban agricultural production with these data supporting claims that benefits outweigh costs.

This study proposes an innovative approach of reutilizing municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash (IBA) for civil engineering applications. IBA is the ash residual after incineration of municipal solid waste. IBA contains a noticeable amount of metallic aluminum, which leads to expansion and cracking of concrete due to the reaction between metallic aluminum in IBA and cement when used as aggregates. Instead of pretreating IBA to remove or immobilize metallic aluminum, this paper explores the possibility of reutilizing IBA as an aerating agent to replace costly aluminum powder and as a supplementary cementitious material to partially replace cement in the production of aerated lightweight concrete. Compressive strength and dry density tests are carried out to evaluate the mechanical and physical properties of the resulting aerated lightweight concrete. The pore structure is analyzed through a microscope and with the image analysis method. The results show that IBA can be used as an aerating agent to produce aerated lightweight concrete. There is an obvious positive correlation between compressive strength and dry density of the resulting material.

In hot climatic zones all buildings that have roofs directly exposed to the sun imparts significant heat gain inside the buildings. The significant problem of excessive cooling demand inside the building can be addressed using reflecting and insulating materials as a retrofitting solution. The present paper elaborates application of sustainable reflecting-cum-insulating (R-I) materials over the flat concrete roof surface for reducing the impact of heat gain inside the buildings. The composite R-I assemblies used for thermal performance assessment includes aluminum sheet, broken glazed tiles, expanded polystyrene (construction waste), sawdust (industrial waste), mineral fiber board (recycled content 38%), and false ceiling panels (recycled content 90%). These materials were placed in two different combinations as a composite heat barrier assembly for exposed concrete roofs of the two model rooms in an educational building over the considered geographic location. In comparison to the untreated concrete slab, the applied composite R-I assemblies resulted in an overall increase in thermal resistance of the first and second assembly by 1.9 and 3.9 times, respectively. Over a period of a year under experimentation, the first and second retrofitted assembly resulted in 6% and 19% reduction in surface temperature, respectively. The considered R-I materials for the experimentation have proved to be a thermally efficient, lighter, and cost-effective solution for energy conservation inside the buildings. The R-I product can further be applied on larger roof areas by the designers to reduce the cooling load of the built environment, as well as to increase the occupants comfort over the local climatic zone.

The idea of recycling plastics is not new. For decades various organizations have promoted the recycling of many materials, including plastic. However, despite these efforts, we as a society need to dramatically increase the amount of plastics we recycle. The U.S. EPA estimates that approximately 64 billion lbs of plastic waste is generated per year, based on 2011 data. This accounts for approximately 12% of the total municipal solid waste. Under the assumption that an average density of plastics is 1.5 g/cm3 (93.64 pcf), this would equate to approximately 683 million cu ft of plastic waste.

Hot mix asphalt (HMA), used extensively in road construction, has the highest greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity among construction subsectors. In the absence of an authorized performance benchmark in the pavement industry, current prevailing practices of HMA form an institutional resistance to change, and emission mitigation efforts are unable to be quantified and rewarded. The objective of this paper is to develop a performance benchmark for sustainable asphalt production based on GHG emission performance. The baseline configuration is the use of conventional HMA. System boundary, functional unit, and calculation method are standardized to support the consistency of the benchmark. A sampling survey of hot mix facilities and placement projects has formed the data pool to conduct the statistics analysis. Results show that the performance benchmark is 115kgCO₂e/MT HMA. It represents an emission level that 80% of existing HMA producers are unable to reach, which reasonably avoids the occurrence of free-riders. Under the carbon trading mechanism with an assumed price of $15/MT carbon, expected benefits from producing a foam stabilized base (FSB), a less carbon-intensive asphalt material, can be $0.7/MT asphalt using CCPR process and $4.2/MT asphalt using CIR process. With the aid of a predetermined performance benchmark, rapidly evolving carbon trading markets may increase the competitive advantages of "green" production in terms of investment offset through carbon trading.

The sustainable performance of a typical small marine capital improvement project was measured using the Envision 2.0 guidance manual and rating system during fall 2012. The Port of Everett project team used Envision to gauge the effectiveness of its sustainability programs, community outreach, and commitments to environmental stewardship. Through this project, the port has a new roll on-roll off (RO-RO) facility that increases operational capacity for supporting the international construction and manufacturing industries. Using a minimal impact design strategy of integrating with an existing marine facility, construction costs and environmental impacts were reduced. The strategy included installing new—and repairing existing—mooring structures, as well as upgrading the existing fender system and removing creosote-treated timber piles. The study shows how parts of the project relate to each Envision category and how points were achieved. With this study, the project team was able to determine the compatibility and functionality of Envision with seaport infrastructure projects. Involved in multiple sustainability programs, the port project team welcomed the chance to continually improve their performance across different applications using Envision, such as in capital improvement projects. Opportunities for the team to improve its sustainability planning and design practices are outlined in the report. Although this project was evaluated at the end of the 100% design phase, the port team came away with multiple examples that will improve its sustainability performance on future projects by using Envision as a guideline. Those include but are not limited to performing a life-cycle analysis, setting sustainability goals in the project design phase, and further developing a sustainable procurement policy for contractors and vendors.

This paper summarizes a study piloted by the Port of Long Beach that investigated the Envision 2.0 rating system to understand how it applies to port infrastructure projects. The study evaluated the sustainable performance of a past project, completed in 2009, in which an active oil field facility underwent site remediation before Envision became available. After review of all pertinent and available project documentation, a team of Envision sustainability professionals rated the project in accordance with the Envision 2.0 guidance manual. The project was evaluated in two ways: the first evaluated the as-built condition, and the second was a hypothetical evaluation that assumed the project team was able to use Envision at the planning stages of the project. Several simple yet high-impact actions were identified that could have improved the project's sustainable performance as indicated by the Envision rating. The Port's project team used the study to evaluate available rating systems, including the port's own sustainable infrastructure guidelines, to objectively support and demonstrate commitment to sustainable development and operations. Guided by its Green Port Policy (GPP) that showcases sustainability as one of five guiding principles, the port's Bureau of Engineering is incorporating principles of sustainable development into its routine project delivery procedures. An appropriate rating system can demonstrate and provide an objective measure of progress against this stated goal. Lessons learned are provided to help the project manager develop more sustainable projects using the Envision guidance manual.

Like any decision -making framework, the Envision rating system has embedded "choice architecture"; for instance, some options are presented before others, options are grouped together, and some are even preselected. Whether intentionally designed to do so or not, choice architecture influences the decisions that are made. In our research, we are examining how Envision's current choice architecture, as well as adjustments to it, might help infrastructure stakeholders choose more sustainable options. In this paper, we draw from behavioral science literature to describe and categorize choice architecture in Envision. We then explore whether changes to defaults, one form of choice architecture, may impact design outcomes. The current default in each category of Envision is zero points, and projects can earn points by improving on industry norms. We hypothesize that a more ambitious default will lead to higher point scores and a more sustainable design. Our rationale is supported by query theory, in which choices are made based on a linear series of questions, and these questions are dependent on the starting point, or default. Research in behavioral economics and consumer decisions have shown that simply changing defaults can lead to drastically different decisions. In this paper we share our methods and preliminary findings from the study of defaults. Then we describe other choice architecture interventions, which warrant further study as they may influence decisions made using the Envision rating system.

A new pedestrian bridge in the City of Long Beach, California, seeks to incorporate sustainable features in the design, but the application of sustainable infrastructure is still undefined. Existing research in this field focuses on calculating embodied energy or embodied carbon, which evaluates sustainability through a strictly environmental lens. A comparison of these criteria to the goals in the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure's Envision rating system shows that Envision considers a holistic, systemwide interpretation of sustainable infrastructure. Envision is, therefore, most applicable for initial high-level decision making, such as where to locate the project site or whether to hire local workers for the project, which are societal factors that carbon and energy estimates do not take into account. The ideal project will have an appropriate focus on all impacts of a project to create a balanced design.

The purpose of this paper is to use the Envision framework to evaluate a portion of the Gerald Desmond Bridge Replacement Project (GDBRP), located in the Port of Long Beach (POLB), in order to test the applicability of Envision framework to similar projects around the world. Evaluation will focus on a portion of the western approach to the main span, proposed in the project reference documents as an elevated horse-shoe ramp but modified through value engineering to an undercrossing, using roadway geometry referred to as the Port Access Undercrossing (PAUC). Acknowledging that many infrastructure owners already have their own sustainability guidelines, this paper also examines synergies between Envision and the Port of Long Beach's own sustainability framework, the Green Port Policy (GPP). The Envision analysis confirms benefits across several different criteria introduced to the GDBRP by the application of the PAUC alternative. Comparison of the Envision analysis results to POLB objectives indicate that the Envision framework is well adapted to work within objectives of the POLB's GPP by providing tools to evaluate a wider range of assets.

Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) developed the Envision rating system in collaboration with the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, to promote the integration of sustainability goals into infrastructure planning and design. This paper develops a concept for incorporating economic valuation measures with Envision to further its growing use among infrastructure owners in making plans and designs more sustainable. Integration of economic valuation with Envision begins with recognition that both approaches measure some of the same dimensions of projects. Economic valuation would support the Envision credit and point system by providing evidence and analytical rigor on how people value economic, environmental, and social outcomes. Economic valuation can help make the Ibusiness case for owners to use Envision to choose projects that provide higher sustainability value in ways that are directly comparable to project costs. A number of challenges and opportunities of integrating economics and Envision are discussed, and final comments include a proposed path forward for the rating system as it evolves.

Our predecessors who planned, designed, and built New York City's modern water supply and sewer systems in the late 1800s and early 1900s were able to create engineering wonders that left future generations the infrastructure to support growth, prosperity, and public health in the city This long-term vision provided a mandate for meeting the needs of the time while providing flexibility for future generations. Embedding these principles into modern project management is in itself a challenge. But only a full life-cycle view of infrastructure will ever be truly sustainable. New York City's Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP) is applying this long-term approach to address the challenges of climate change and increasingly limited energy and material resources. This paper provides information about NYCDEP's process of defining and implementing its sustainability objectives within the context of an existing project delivery system.

Building information modeling (BIM) is increasing the transparency and consistency of data in the planning, design, and operations phases of infrastructure projects. Economic cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is currently used on infrastructure projects to decide whether to proceed and, occasionally, which alternatives to design. Marrying CBA with BIM has tremendous potential to help in making sustainability and resiliency decisions related to infrastructure. This paper shows how CBA-BIM can produce better estimates of the social value of infrastructure, characterized in the quality of life category in Envision, as well as addressing issues of social equity. CBA-BIM has the potential to measure the resiliency of physical infrastructure across the full economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainability.

The Sun Valley Watershed Multi-Benefit Project is a first-of-its-kind venture geared toward managing stormwater for the Sun Valley watershed to provide flood protection, improve watershed health, and increase open space and recreational opportunities, as well as increase wildlife habitat. The Sun Valley watershed is historically plagued with several watershed health issues, such as severe flooding, poor water quality, and industrial and residential urbanization. The watershed lacks a comprehensive storm drain system and consequently suffers from chronic, severe flooding during moderate storm events. During these events, intersections are inundated, and stormwater on major streets resemble river flows. In 2001 Los Angeles County led a comprehensive effort to address all of the watershed health issues in Sun Valley through a multibenefit approach. A group of stakeholders was assembled to form the Sun Valley Watershed Stakeholders Group. The group aims to develop long term solutions to the chronic flooding issues that provide additional benefits to the community. This group consists of local and federal agencies, government offices, environmental groups, local businesses, conservation agencies and residents of the community. The mission of the Sun Valley Watershed Stakeholders Group is to solve the local flooding problem while retaining all stormwater runoff from the watershed, increasing water conservation, recreational opportunities, and wildlife habitat, and reducing stormwater pollution. This led to the development of the Sun Valley Watershed Management Plan, which identified 15 pilot components that collectively achieve the established watershed goals. Since the development of this plan, four of the components have been constructed and an additional four are in the planning and design phases. The Sun Valley Watershed Multi-Benefit Project encompasses the following eight constructed and proposed components: Valley steam plant, Tuxford Green, Sun Valley Park drain and infiltration system, Rory M Shaw Wetlands Park, Sun Valley Watershed upper storm drain system and recycled water line, Elmer Avenue Neighborhood retrofit, Elmer Avenue Paseo, and Whitnall powerline easement. The SunValley Watershed Multi-Benefit Project represents a blue ribbon project that has successfully integrated a balanced approach in design in an economically, environmentally, and socially responsible way.

The need for investment in infrastructure and public buildings continues to grow with no end in sight. Deferred maintenance and expanding service demands are compounding the funding challenge. The days of federal ear marks have ended, and formula grants are being replaced by highly competitive merit-based programs. In the meantime, private sector impact investors are eager to deploy pension fund, family office, socially responsible, and ESG sourced capital into infrastructure and public building projects. There is enormous potential to more than offset public funding shortfalls with impact capital, but barriers to entry exist. Project sponsors will need to convince merit-based funding programs and private sector investors of the value associated with their initiatives. In the new normal, where public or private capital is concerned, infrastructure delivery professionals will need to learn to compete. Competition will be driven by metrics, assessment standards, and access to capacity. It is going to be complicated for a while as the lack of formal standards, and adequately trained and equipped evaluation capacity presents a major challenge to the removal of funding barriers. This paper describes how Envision can serve as a solution to the standards, training, and capacity challenges to project funding while creating a competitive advantage for Envision professionals, their project sponsors, and stakeholders as they search and compete for funding to implement their sustainable infrastructure programs.

Civil infrastructure in both the United States and Canada is in distress. Trillions of dollars of investment is needed by 2020 to address deterioration, strained capacity, and underperformance. Conventional methods must be replaced by a new holistic approach that not only addresses the social, environmental, and economic impacts of infrastructure but demonstrates how developing sustainably creates value, mitigates risk and warrants investment. The Envision rating system and related business case analytic tools are helping inform defensible design decisions, evaluate relative sustainability, and recognize success to assist in closing the infrastructure gap in a way that is both financially and environmentally prudent and farsighted.

Landfills are common land disposal methods employed in most of the developing countries across the world. The waste disposal methods, such as open dumps, landfill without and with gas recovery systems and bioreactor landfills, are assessed using the life-cycle analysis (LCA) method. These scenarios were applied to Bangalore (Karnataka, India). This method serves as a decision making tool for selecting the most sustainable, energy- and cost-efficient methods. The analysis is done in terms of the material flow, energy flow, and impacts of open dumping and land filling on the environment. The global warming potential was considered as the most important factor, as its impact on the environment is high. The life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is also done considering an average life of a landfill as 50 years. Cost analysis was done in terms of the initial fixed costs, yearly maintenance cost, and postclosure monitoring and maintenance cost. The revenue generated from trading power that could be generated from the landfills was also considered. The power that could be generated from the landfills was calculated as 11 MW. The bioreactor landfill could be used twice in 50 years when compared to the engineered landfill as the waste stabilization period varied from 10 years in bioreactor landfill to few decades in case of engineered landfills. Among the four scenarios, the bioreactor landfill had an edge over the other methods environmentally and economically, whereas the open dump scenario was the least favored option as the impacts caused to the environment was considerably huge.

Traditional engineering is a process of maximizing utility while minimizing cost to the client. Engineering for sustainability must vastly expand these concepts to become a process of "maximizing social benefit while minimizing negative ecological impact." This paper explores the descriptions surrounding sustainable development, and completes them sufficiently to include units of measure for sustainable technological development. The method to measure how sustainable any technological development proposal would be is derived from these definitions, and from that method the most sustainable alternative can be determined. This paper introduces a relationship between the time it takes for members of a community to meet their needs and the resources consumed by the community. Canadian data are presented to provide an example of this curve. Each community, regardless of scale, will have a unique relationship due to their own assets and aspirations. This approach focuses on the efficiency by which people use their time to meet their needs. It does not address the effectiveness of how people use their time to meet their needs. The proposed method uses this relationship to convert excessive resource consumption into a time cost to the community. A life-cycle analysis (LCA) is undertaken for each alternative design, using human time as the unit of measure. Any alternative that produces a positive net time benefit to the community is sustainable. The alternative that produces the maximum net time benefit to the community is the most sustainable.

The research project focused on the evaluation of Colorado Department of Transportation's rest areas related to sustainable design and operations. A sustainability assessment was performed on six selected rest areas focusing on sustainable design and operations. Sustainable rest area assessment and scoring criteria developed by the TerraLogic and Colorado State University-Pueblo Team used a checklist approach that involved the following criteria: existing site conditions, materials recycling and reuse, existing environment, air quality, water quality/usage, energy, and public/motorist/trucking outreach and services. Rest area carbon footprints were calculated and carbon reduction strategies developed primarily for long-term idling trucks. Cost-effective sustainable recommendations were provided that focused on efficient use of water resources, solid waste management, and energy efficiency. Recommendations included native landscaping, reductions in lawn irrigation, material recycling, water saving faucets, lighting motion detectors, and LED lighting. Research identified the potential of using public private partnerships to support funding innovative rest area operations.

Sustainability analysis, or triple bottom line analysis, is increasingly recognized as a holistic approach when all the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic and social aspects) are equally incorporated into the decision-making process of a project. Currently, the tools for assessing the environmental and economic impacts are well established. On the contrary, the development of a quantitative tool to assess the social impacts has been particularly challenging, because a multitude of subjective factors may vary among social entities depending on the type of project assessed. In this study, a new tool called Social Sustainability Evaluation Matrix (SSEM) is developed and applied to two environmental remediation project sites. In both cases, remedial options were previously identified and assessed based on environmental and economic aspects. SSEM is an Excel-based tool comprising four social dimensions: (1) socioindividual, (2) socioinstitutional, (3) socioeconomic, and (4) socioenvironmental. Under each dimension, several key areas are identified, and a scoring system is devised to quantify the extent of resulting social impacts. Scores for the identified key areas are summed under each social dimension, and a comparative assessment is performed to allow for more informed decisions about remedy selection, design, implementation, and mitigation as necessary. Overall, SSEM was found to be quite beneficial in assessing social sustainability of the selected remedial options in this study; however, it is important to incorporate an objective basis to the highest degree practicable. Also, when negative, substantive impacts are identified, mitigation efforts should be made to minimize or avoid the impact.

The California delta is the heart of the state's water system and ground zero in the search for sustainable solutions to problems of water supply, habitat restoration, and flood risk reduction. For years the delta ecosystem has been in decline threatening species collapse and water supply reliability. In addition, people and infrastructure in the delta are dependent on levees for flood protection, levees that are susceptible to failure from earthquakes, seepage, and overtopping. Catastrophic levee failure would be devastating to people, water supply, infrastructure, and the environment. Water supply, habitat restoration, and flood risk reduction are interdependent systems in the delta, and our current ways of managing them are neither efficient nor sustainable. To implement new water infrastructure, restore habitat, and reduce flood risk, we must find solutions that meet not only today's needs but the needs of future generations as well. A sustainable water supply and a sustainable delta depend on a systems approach to achieve resiliency, efficiency, and smooth integration with other infrastructure systems; on sound decision making to manage risk and adapt to change; and on meeting the state's coequal goals of water supply reliability and ecosystem restoration.

We cannot simply "flip the switch" and move from fossil fuel-based power to renewable power as many would like to believe. Sustainability is an evolution not a revolution. The global community has developed a reliance on fossil fuels and many other nonrenewable commodities, including precious metals and other minerals provided by the earth. These natural resources are enablers in today's society in that they are necessary to fuel our lifestyle and quality of life. Globally, the result is a continued depletion of natural resources, thus, if not arguably, increasingly affecting our ability as a society to ensure the availability of natural resources for future generations. Therefore, while we continue to consume natural resources we have to hope and anticipate that our future generations will continually evolve sustainably. Businesses drive the world economy, and whereas governments can pass legislation for standards and requirements, ethical behavior cannot be legislated. However, it is clear that once unethical behavior is uncovered, the consequences to an organization for its unethical behavior can be severe, but by then the damage is already done and difficult, if not impossible, to undo. The Code of Ethics that a business adopts determines and shapes its ethical practices and it is the resulting culture and attitudes of its employees that maintain its reputation. Although founded in common principles, each business will adopt a unique ethical code. Arguably, it is, at least in part, through the ethical decisions that engineering companies achieve the Social License to Operate (SLO) that drives sustainable development locally, regionally, and globally. In this paper we take a look at ethics and the social license that businesses, specifically engineering companies, are adopting to guide the sustainability evolution and the consequences (intended and unintended) of those paths.

At Crossrail, we are passionate, not just about building a new railway but ensuring it is delivered in a way that provides a lasting economic, environmental, and social sustainability legacy. We have enshrined this in our strategy and governance processes and our contractors have joined us on this journey. This paper provides a comprehensive yet concise account of how Crossrail has organized itself to deliver a sustainable outcome, as well as detailing a structure for successful outcomes. This paper covers four main themes: planning for delivering sustainability on a major infrastructure project, creating a sustainability governance structure to manage sustainability performance, using sustainability assessment methodologies to help outcomes, and encouraging innovation to deliver better sustainability outcomes This paper will be of particular interest to client organizations responsible for national infrastructure but also provides valuable information for designers and construction professionals.

Highway right-of-way (ROW) areas are becoming recognized as potential alternative energy resources to many state departments of transportation (DOTs). In an era of limited state DOT budgets, ROW areas can be a source of income and cost savings to DOTs for alternative energy development, especially in the area of solar energy. State DOTs and private tollway authorities have been leasing ROW areas to energy providers to offset carbon footprint emissions or obtain financial resource through long-term lease agreements. Research was conducted to identify the potential risk-based impacts associated with the construction and operation of solar array systems within the Colorado Department of Transportation's highway right of ways that are associated with driver safety, environmental resources, and operation and maintenance activities. Literature searches, professional communications, and computer modeling of glare impacts were performed at study site areas. The main potential impacts were associated with increasing snow drifting and deposition, glare, stormwater management, potential vehicle collisions with solar array structures, noxious weed introduction, and altering mowing operations.

The risk of extreme damage to critical facilities by attacks from terrorists or disgruntled employees combined with process risks is becoming a major factor in the design. The approach suggested by extant practices and guides with this regard has evolved into a pseudo-design methodology involving missing columns and "tie force" designs and detailing. Very different design concepts are needed to analyze structures that are highly damaged or have failed completely. The new design paradigm focuses on component design of critical building elements using a threat dependent, performance-based methodology using high-fidelity physics-based (HFPB) finite element codes that capture actual material and component response. One of these is LS-DYNA developed by Livermore Software Technology Center. To counter the difficulty, expense and high degree of skills needed for use of HFPB codes one approach is to develop and use a library of fast running models (FRMs), which interrogate a database of virtual HFPB response data for given components and loading. These FRMs can be rapidly and easily run on desktop computers and can provide access to a domain of solutions far outside the capability of simplified engineering tools for a range of loading scenarios, such as air blast loading from high-explosive detonations, vapor cloud explosions, and primary and secondary fragmentation. Component design using HFB codes and FRMs for speed and economy of analysis will provide a far more meaningful analysis for blast effects, including disproportionate collapse than simplified methods advocated in the unified facilities criteria (UFC) and similar design guidance documents.

The 10-acre South Los Angeles Wetland Park is located in Southern California in a historically underserved area of Los Angeles County formerly known as South Central Los Angeles. Completed in 2013, it is a feature project of Proposition O, a program supported by a series of general obligation bonds valued at $500 million. The multibenefit, constructed stormwater-treatment wetland facility was conceived to protect public health by removing pollution from the city's watercourses in order to meet Federal Clean Water Act requirements. The Envision Platinum award-winning project represents a bold, integrated engineering solution that successfully built consensus, captured and improved local urban runoff, and created a new neighborhood-revitalizing amenity. It is the result of partnership between a public works department and a consulting engineering team who collaborated to advance the paradigm of multibenefit public projects. This paper provides a case study illustrating how the South Los Angeles Wetland Park embodies the triple bottom line of sustainability through its social, environmental, and economic elements.

The City of Los Angeles has depended on imported water since 1913 and devotes substantial resources to maintain the Los Angeles Aqueduct and related infrastructure. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake occurred during aqueduct design, and the San Andreas Fault was soon recognized as a major earthquake hazard that could not be avoided. The aqueduct crosses the fault in the middle of the Elizabeth Tunnel section (8-km- [5-mi-] long, concrete-lined, horseshoe-shaped). The current tunnel capacity is 19.6 m³/s (310,000 gal/min) or approximately 1.69 billion L/day (446 million gal/day). A major earthquake generated by San Andreas Fault is expected to produce lateral displacement and strong shaking. Displacement of Elizabeth Tunnel at the fault might be 3 m (10 ft) or less over a zone 3 m (10 ft) or more wide. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe in New Zealand proved to be resilient during earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. The City of Los Angeles plans to install an HDPE pipe section across the fault zone to provide a means for some water to pass through the tunnel after the next San Andreas Fault earthquake. The capacity of the tunnel under normal operating conditions will be reduced, but if the HDPE pipe remains open, a 0.91-m- (36-in-) diameter pipe could pass about 18% of the current capacity. The Los Angeles Aqueduct is existing infrastructure upon which the City of Los Angeles depends. Conserving water and maintaining infrastructure to extend life cycles are major parts of the city's sustainability program. The planned modifications are an innovative approach that could improve the likelihood that some of the city's water will cross the San Andreas Fault after the next major earthquake. Two other aqueducts bring water to Southern California (Colorado River Aqueduct and California Aqueduct), both of which cross the San Andreas Fault in canal sections.

Billions of dollars are spent worldwide every year on nuclear remediation projects. Most of this work is done now as it was done decades ago and is very labor and resource intensive. AMEC has developed technology that has been deployed on projects across the United States and in Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom that makes such projects shorter in duration and more sustainable through reductions in waste volume requiring permanent disposal and through minimization of resources to complete such projects. Benefits to local communities and taxpayers have included return of land to beneficial public use quicker and at lower cost than traditional methods; reduction of impacts from large workforces and heavy equipment; reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from shorter duration projects using less fossil fuels; and reduction in the volumes of materials that are otherwise needlessly diverted to landfills for disposal as radioactive waste. Information is presented on development of sustainable approaches and solutions to such projects, as well as a case study of where it has been successfully used.

Emerging concepts and innovations in the design and operation of private and public infrastructures are transforming the application of sustainability thinking within the engineering profession. These changes result from global megatrends, such as climate change; water resource availability; population growth and mega-urbanization; a dramatic expansion in the size of the global middle class; technological innovations, such as widespread digitization and emergence of new information technology capabilities and services; and new collaboration strategies. The paper presents several mini-case studies that illustrate the new challenges to engineering education in private and public infrastructure and identifies emerging strategies for collaboration involving business, academia, and other stakeholders to prepare the next generation of engineering leaders to implement sustainability.

The deficiencies in safety and functional obsolescence of U.S. infrastructure call for innovative solutions to end this crisis. Biomimicry, the imitation of nature's patterns and strategies, may be one approach toward adaptable infrastructure that is continually safe and relevant. This paper describes a project-based course that has been developed to engage students in exploring bioinspired, adaptable solutions through structural art. Students work together in an interdisciplinary team to learn about current problems in and potential solutions to our infrastructure crisis. This project culminates in a sculpture that is designed, constructed, and presented by the students to illustrate their understanding and proposed solution to these issues, where the objective of the structure itself is to increase public awareness of bioinspired and adaptable infrastructure solutions.

"Infrastructural ecology" is described here as a planning and design framework that promotes beneficial exchanges across the energy, water, waste, and transportation service sectors to reduce collective system costs, improve performance, and reduce environmental and social impacts. Patterned on the workings of natural ecosystems, infrastructural ecology fosters synergies through proactive colocation or otherwise networking of different sector systems. Asset design may also capitalize on adjacent or local land uses, and utilize untapped constructed or natural system resources. Infrastructural facilities may incorporate other commercial, cultural, or even recreational amenities to address community sensitivities while fostering job creation. Ultimately more sustainable, such networked infrastructure facilities are integrated, multipurpose, and synergistic; they reduce carbon intensity and greenhouse gas emissions, assimilate the free work of natural systems, and can enhance the community in which they are situated. Descriptions of several successful case studies around the world exemplify these ideas and reveal important cobenefits that accrue to each project's triple bottom line.

A sustainability module was included in courses for first-year engineering students majoring in civil, environmental, architectural, and general engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. The low infrastructure grades in America were used to help motivate students about the importance of sustainable engineering. A homework assignment required students to select a case study from one of the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card areas and discuss how it did or could target sustainability. A rubric was used to determine if students discussed environmental, social, and economic aspects. The civil, architectural, and general engineering students also explored the Greenroads rating system, LEED, or Envision, respectively. Environmental engineering students explored life-cycle assessment. At the end of the semester the students increased in their self-efficacy for sustainable engineering knowledge. The paper provides an example of a simple module that helped students achieve knowledge and comprehension of sustainable engineering.

The link between energy, water, wastewater, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has become an important topic for industrial manufacturing operations. Productivity initiatives across the industrial manufacturing sector are creating demand for energy and water programs that reduce operating costs and provide environmental benefits. Stakeholders are able to elevate the need for energy, water, and wastewater programs through various business drivers. Defining leading and lagging metrics are an important component toward successfully implementing an energy and water management program. Energy and water optimization opportunities identified in facilities may be more successful when evaluated outside the structure of a traditional energy-water nexus approach. Organizations are now considering the interaction of water optimization through reduction and reuse, energy consumption reduction and demand management, downstream waste management practices, and GHG emissions as an integrated approach. This paper presents perspectives on energy and water management program development and assessment. This includes strategic planning with a bottom up and top down approach for water and energy consumption reduction schemes, management of downstream waste and wastewater, and associated GHG impacts.

The power sector is responsible for approximately one-half of the United States' annual water withdrawals and approximately 3% of its annual water consumption. The majority of this water is devoted to cooling thermoelectric power plants by means of once-through or recirculating cooled systems. Despite the large water requirements of the power sector, water conservation strategies are typically concentrated in the urban and agricultural sectors. Although national agencies such as the U.S. Geological Survey and the Energy Information Administration do publish data regarding the water use requirements of power plants, these data are often incomplete, inaccurate, and are published infrequently. Consequently, data resolving the temporal variability of water use by the power sector are largely nonexistent, making conservation strategies difficult to construct. This analysis utilizes a unit commitment and dispatch (UC&D) model to estimate water requirements of approximately 3,600 power plants in the Western Electricity Coordinating Council in the year 2020. The UC&D model used here computed generation, water consumption, and water withdrawal rates for 8,760 hourly timesteps for the projected load and generation fleet in 2020. Results suggest that the grid will become increasingly water-lean in the future, but will still require 3,600 billion gal/year in 2020, of which 7% will be consumed. The results of this study are important for developing effective water conservation strategies through the electric power grid by considering the temporal and spatial aspects of the water supply and the water needs of the grid.

Water quality in New York Harbor is currently impacted by combined sewage and stormwater discharges during large or intense rainfall events. In accordance with the 2012 Modified Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO) Consent Order, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will implement green infrastructure (GI) practices incrementally over the next two decades to manage 1 in. of runoff from 10% of its impervious surfaces in combined sewer areas citywide. In 2009, the city began designing, constructing, and monitoring the performance of multiple pilot projects including enhanced tree pits, vegetated infiltration swales, rain gardens, blue roofs, pervious pavement, and underground infiltration systems to inform the citywide buildout of GI. These GI systems have been constructed in a variety of locations including in the right of way, highway medians, park-and-ride lots, public parks, and public housing facilities. Construction was completed in 2011 for most systems, with postconstruction monitoring (PCM) of each completed system continuing over 2 years. Monitoring has been conducted to quantify inflow and outflow rates, ponding levels, drawdown rates, and water quality, and to examine maintenance needs and overall system functionality.

A new ternary plot tool, the Water Budget Triangle, is described and examined for comparing hydrologic functions of unlike systems. The tool is intended as a visual indicator of the distribution of mass outflow among event runoff (Q), evapotranspiration (ET), and percolated or stored drainage (I) to evaluate and compare greenhouse infrastructure (GI) technologies. The same tool may be used to plot other stormwater systems, such as storm sewers, cisterns, and detention or retention ponds for comparison and reference. This tool may be used as an analytical monitoring device to identify "normal" operating zones for individual installations of classes of systems and also as a diagnostic tool to identify systems that are not functioning within their intended range.

A sustainable infrastructure improves the short- and long-term economic and environmental performance while taking the impact on society into consideration. In order to create a sustainable infrastructure there are a number of underlying components, such as transport, energy, water, communication, solid waste, etc., that needs to be addressed. For each component in turn, sustainability is influenced by different factors, such as planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance. In addition, the impact of different entities, such as governments, international organizations, local authorities, construction companies, and materials and tools manufacturers need to be considered. In this paper, the transport infrastructure and how transport solution manufacturers influence a sustainable infrastructure is discussed, and a measurement method is presented for measuring the sustainability of transport solutions.

In response to problems, such as decreasing availability of resources, changing climate, and the need to minimize wastes, engineers are being asked to incorporate new constraints into their decision making. The result is the emerging field of sustainable engineering, which is changing the practice of engineering worldwide. Several efforts are underway to enable more efficient development, sharing, and use of sustainable engineering educational materials at universities. Here we discuss a couple of those efforts taking place in the United States, namely the activities of the Center for Sustainable Engineering operated by a consortium of universities, as well as plans to develop a community-oriented web platform to serve as a repository for educational materials.

This paper describes a model designed to facilitate the decision-making process for corridor rehabilitation of municipal assets. The proposed model comprises four main modules encompassing identification of corridor segments, risk assessment of individual asset networks, and integrated risk assessment to identify critical corridor segments and set priorities for intervention plans. In general, risk assessment requires integration of the criticality of the asset condition and the consequences of failure values to prioritize intervention plans. Each asset network was evaluated with respect to 13 economic, social, and environmental factors using a weighted scoring system. The criticality index of each asset was developed by combining the consequence of failure index with the condition rating index. The integrated risk index for network segments was calculated by integrating the three criticality indices of the individual assets. A case study, from one of the 19 boroughs within the metropolitan area of the City of Montreal in Canada, was used to illustrate the developed modules and their respective functions. The results indicated a strong positive relationship between the integrated risk index and the criticality indices of the three networks. It also shows that the model successfully represents the integrated criticality index for the combined water, sewer, and road segments using their criticality indices as the coefficient of determination R² was 0.9656. The implementation of the proposed model on the case study enabled condition rating of integrated segments into five main levels of criticality. The developed model is expected to assist municipal engineers and decision makers to prioritize inspections, rehabilitation, and replacement decisions and optimize budget allocation and resource usage.

Experimental and numerical studies were carried out to determine the suitability of green natural fiber reinforced polymer (GNFRP) composite plates, fabricated with a bioderived resin matrix and embedded natural hemp fibers acting as tensile and transverse reinforcement and produced using a vacuum resin infusion process to be used for strengthening reinforced concrete (RC) beams for flexural loading. The experimental study consisted of four RC beams: three of them used for control purposes (one plain, two with the traditional glued carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites plates) and one with 10 glued layers of the GNFRP composite plate to study the proposed strengthening system. Strength, ductility, and failure modes were analyzed and compared to the numerically obtained results by ABAQUS, the finite element software. The increased stiffness and the ultimate strengths of RC beams strengthened with GNFRP composites plates confirmed that strengthening RC beams using externally bonded GNFRP composites plates fabricated with a bioderived resin matrix and natural hemp fibers is a feasible alternative and a practical approach to retrofitting reinforced concrete structures.

Following a recent surge in the green building movement, several universities now require the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for all their new facilities. This paper investigates the actual occupant satisfaction of LEED-certified higher education facilities through studying seven LEED-certified buildings located on the Arizona State University (ASU) campus in Tempe, Arizona. Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) occupant satisfaction surveys were used to collect data from more than 160 occupants. The surveyed LEED buildings earned, on average, a 77.6% overall satisfaction rating. The results show ASU LEED buildings performed better than the Center for the Built Environment (CBE) benchmark, which is based on 59,359 completed surveys. In addition to comparing the results with other studies, this paper highlights an inconsistency between the LEED points earned for IEQ and the actual level of occupant satisfaction. In addition, the paper showcases a need for improvement in the USGBC rating system in such a way that correlates the awarded LEED rating with the actual performance of the building during the occupation phase, as opposed to the intended performance during the design and construction stages.

Today, buildings contribute about 40% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions and consume about 70% of the electricity produced in the United States. Due to this high rate of consumption, governments and numerous organizations have worked avidly on ways to design, build, and recognize high-performance or sustainable buildings. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system is intended to award buildings that "save energy, use fewer resources and reduce pollution." This paper is part of a study that aims to test the following hypothesis: LEED certified buildings save energy in their operations phase. The research objective was accomplished by investigating LEED-certified buildings on a university campus and measuring their energy performance against that of non-LEED building counterparts. Energy performance was calculated in terms of energy unit intensity (EUI) by combining heating, cooling, and electricity data from the metered buildings on campus. Preliminary data show LEED-certified dormitory buildings seem to have lower energy consumption as compared to non-LEED buildings, LEED-certified research buildings seem to use more energy than their non-LEED counterparts, and LEED office buildings are not displaying major differences in energy performance. However, the use and research intensity of these buildings and their effect on energy consumption have not been investigated yet, and statistical analysis is currently being completed to verify these preliminary conclusions.

Extensive green roofs provide many ecosystem services lacking in the urban environment and are a widely implemented green infrastructure solution for urban stormwater. Yet few studies consider the performance of large green roofs after installation. This study presents initial data covering a few days in fall 2013 collected at a large exterior green roof (0.56 ha) in Syracuse, New York. Temperature sensors were installed throughout the layers of the roof during construction. Daily temperature follows an approximate sine curve with amplitude decreasing as a function of depth into the roof. Analysis of temperature within the roof layers indicates lag times of 3 to 4 h relative to air temperature, illustrating slow heat transfer through the layers. Initial observations of growth medium moisture conditions show changing thermal properties as moisture content changes. Future work will consider heat transfer in all seasons and the influence of building HVAC system data on the roof temperature profile.

Growth, prosperity, and economic development for developing countries are dependent on reliable and safe transportation systems. Road and highway systems provide a critical role in creating and maintaining economic development and a desirable quality of life. Embedding environmentally sustainable principles and best practices into road projects in the developing world has been a challenge for governments andinternational financial institutions. The problems faced in the developing world have many unique aspects, including varying degrees of commitment, limited financial resources and lack of understanding about sustainability concepts and how to address them given the country specific characteristics. The World Bank developed a guidance document to assist bank project staff and its clients in integrating environmentally sustainable elements into road transportation projects, thus helping to promote green growth. The focus was to identify a range of ideas and options to improve environmental sustainability throughout all phases of the project cycle (system planning, project planning and design, construction, and operation and maintenance) using a rating system tool. The approach builds on five national and international sustainability rating systems and provides an extensive set of environmental road sustainability criteria. The guidance also presents a summary of road transportation environmentally sustainable technology information to stimulate consideration in existing and new road projects. The paper presents a summary of contents and use of the sustainability-based road guidance and provides some case studies, insights, and suggestions for moving forward given the initial findings from its use in Latin America.

Sustainable practices have become the cornerstone of the transportation sector and widely adopted by many states' transportation agencies. Sustainable practices have now become the edifice of the transportation sectors, but the adoption of such practices is not fast enough to overcome the ever-increasing global demand for resources. There are numerous sustainable policies and rating systems, and most of them follow similar approaches and formats that outline the sustainability factors. This paper proposes a quantitative approach to measure and evaluate sustainable performance of the transportation sector. The paper makes an extensive analysis on carbon emissions when treated by total population and gross domestic product (GDP). The evaluation focuses on the transparency of sustainability through measurement and quantification of sustainability rather than to develop standard compliance approaches. These measurement and quantification approaches would allow transportation agencies to measure and thus reduce their carbon footprints.

Structural engineers often limit their involvement in sustainability to material selection and recycling. Few structural engineers recognize the relationship between sustainability and disaster resilience. In response, the Sustainability Committee of the Structural Engineering Institute wrote a committee report to raise awareness of and provide guidance on the pertinent issues. This paper highlights the salient parts of the committee report. The introduction explains the relationship between sustainability and resilience and reviews the impacts of natural disasters. The following sections discuss general consideration for resilient design and summarize efforts to promote resilience and guidance for resilient design. Next are discussed current efforts to quantify the connection between disaster resilience and sustainability. The paper concludes with suggestions for structural engineers who are interested in supporting disaster resilience and sustainability.