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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

Environmental values and ecoindicators of the infra construction

Vaylarakentamisen ymparistovaikutukset ekoindikaattorit: Ehdotus arviointijarjestelmaksi

The "Environmental values and eco-indicators in infra construction" study started at the end of 2004. It was part of the technology programme INFRA of the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes). The main objective of the study was to develop a method to estimate the environmental impacts of infrastructure construction taking in to account the different stages of the construction project. The infrastructure in question was restricted to include roads, railways, streets and waterways. Environmental impacts can be described in many ways. In the study, the objective was to develop a life cycle based assessment method to estimate environmental impacts of a infraconstruction project. The method was designed so that it could be implemented in the design, building, maintenance and management of infrastructure. The system includes all remarkable factors of the environmental impact categories and corresponding environmental stressors. The project developed a draft for an assessment method EIMI (Environmental Impacts of Infrastructure). With the help of the system the total environmental impact is described in terms of eleven environmental impact categories. The categories are indicated with the help of environmental stressors. The system includes indicator descriptions, their potential measuring methods and limit values. Some stressors are described qualitatively and with the help of classification. To be able to estimate the total environmental impact, the environmental impact categories were arranged in order of importance according to their relevance. The evaluation was made in a public workshop together with the representatives of different sectors of infrastructure. The assessment method EIMI is a systematic and simplified method to estimate environmental impacts. The method is powerful when different alternatives are compared with one other. However, the quality of the result depends on the assessment method itself - especially the comprehensiveness of impact categories and the validity of the weighting. In addition, the quality of the result depends of the care taken in the assessment procedure and especially on the accuracy of data collection. The method includes subjective yet transparent weightings, which may be chosen to meet one's goals. Two practical problems arise when the assessment method is exploited. Firstly, all the necessary source data may not be available, and, secondly, not all essential factors should be included in the comparisons. One must bear in mind that the weightings of the categories are rough estimations and thus they should be re-estimated from case to case. At the same time the scope of the assessment method - the number of impact categories and stressors - should be estimated. One restricting factor may be that not all stressors have indicators or a measuring method at all or the stressor may be insufficient. In the future an assessment tool will be developed to be able to compare different structural alternatives, tenders or designed alternatives. More research is also needed to further develop stressors, indicators and their measuring methods. This report may be found at http://alk.tiehallinto.fi/julkaisut/pdf/3200998-vaylarakentamisen_ymparistovaik_ekoindikaattorit.pdf

Language

  • Finnish

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Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01038002
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: TRL
  • ISBN: 951-803-712-4
  • Files: ITRD
  • Created Date: Dec 19 2006 10:09AM