| Abstrakt: |
Considering the profound role of infrastructure in the welfare of societies, it is important to invest in their sustainable development, particularly in developing countries. One of the main challenges, however, is the lack of a practical assessment framework and locally-proper criteria to rate the sustainability level. The purpose of this research is identifying proper context-specific sustainability criteria and introducing a sustainability assessment framework for developing countries like Iran, based on the customization of an existing comprehensive assessment framework (i.e., the Envision Rating System). Research data was collected through in-depth interviews with subject-matter experts and using an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach to revise the parameters' weights and points based on the context-specific conditions. Alongside the five newly added credits, the research's findings on the weights of the main groups represent the higher importance of the social aspect of sustainability in Iran in contrast to the country where the Envision was developed. Also, credits reflecting water crisis and public health concerns in Iran, including 'Preserve Water Resources' and 'Enhance Public Health and Safety' were recognized as the most important credits in the customized framework, respectively. To validate the application of the customized framework, sustainability performance of a case was studied. This customized framework can meaningfully contribute to sustainable development by providing a new method and solution to appraise the sustainability of infrastructure projects in developing countries and help decision makers build higher-quality infrastructure to improve urban resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
