Sustainability assessment of roadway projects under uncertainty using Green Proforma: An index-based approach

Growing environmental and socioeconomic concerns due to rapid urbanization, population growth and climate change impacts have motivated decision-makers to incorporate sustainable best practices for transportation infrastructure development and management. A “sustainable” transportation infrastructure implies that all the sustainability objectives (i.e., mobility, safety, resource efficiency, economy, ecological protection, environmental quality) are adequately met during the infrastructure life cycle. State-of-the-art sustainability rating tools contain the best practices for the sustainability assessment of infrastructure projects. Generally, the existing rating tools are not well equipped to handle uncertainties associated with data limitations and expert opinion and cannot effectively adapt to site specific constraints for reliable sustainability assessment. This paper presents the development of a customizable tool, called “Green Proforma” for the sustainability assessment of roadway projects under uncertainties. For evaluating how well the project meets sustainability objectives, a hierarchical framework is used to develop the sustainability objective indices by aggregating the selected indicators with the help of fuzzy synthetic evaluation technique. These indices are further aggregated to attain an overall sustainability index for a roadway project. To facilitate the decision makers, a “Roadway Project Sustainometer” has been developed to illustrate how well the roadway project is meeting its sustainability objectives. By linking the sustainability objectives to measurable indicators, the “Green Proforma” paves the way for a practical approach in sustainable planning and management of roadway projects.