Sustainability assessment framework and indicators developed by SuRF‐UK for land remediation option appraisal

Abstract

The scale of land-contamination problems, and of the responses to them, makes achieving sustainability in contaminated land remediation an important objective. The Sustainable Remediation Forum in the UK (SuRF-UK) was established in 2007 to support more sustainable remediation practices in the UK. The prevailing international consensus is that risk assessment is the most rational approach for determining remediation needs and urgency. Sustainability in this context is related to the effective delivery of whatever risk management is necessary to protect human health or the wider environment. SuRF-UK suggests that decisions made at the project planning stage, and also in the choice of remediation approach used to reach particular objectives decided upon, are both opportunities for sustainability gain. In 2011, SuRF-UK issued a set of wide-ranging indicators to support sustainability assessments made during project planning and remediation option appraisal. This advice was reviewed over 2018-2020 and new guidance on process and indicators has been released. Within this guidance, SuRF-UK has provided a checklist of possible sustainability indicators/criteria that can be used to benchmark the scope of sustainability assessment for remediation projects. These indicators are divided into 15 overarching ("headline") categories, divided in a balanced way across the three elements of sustainability: environmental (emissions to air, soil and ground conditions, groundwater and surface water, ecology, and natural resources and waste); social (human health and safety, ethics and equity, neighborhoods and locality, communities and community involvement, and uncertainty and evidence); and economic (direct economic costs and benefits, indirect economic costs and benefits, employment and employment capital, induced economic costs and benefits, and project lifespan and flexibility). The majority of this study explains these categories and their various considerations in more depth and provides the supporting rationale that led to their inclusion in the revised SuRF-UK guidance.

Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis to Support the Remediation of Polluted Soils: A Review of Case Studies

“…Nine of them reported that criteria selection was inspired by a sustainable remediation framework [42,45] or by national or regional regulations or guidance [46,47]. The framework most referred to in the case studies was the Sustainable Remediation Forum (SuRF) [48,49]. Other frameworks considering positive and negative environmental, economic, and social effects were the USEPA Green Remediation Programme [50], the Network for Industrially Contaminated Land in Europe [8], the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), and the five year US superfund review [51].…”

Evaluation of Factors Affecting the Competitive Advantage of Organizations in Establishing Sustainable Project Management Post Covid-19

“…Tere is a dearth of literature on sustainable project management systems for infrastructure development projects in the United Kingdom. Bardos et al [14] and Alaloul and Qureshi [15] argued that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses will require a competitive edge greater than ever before to efectively mitigate the risks posed by the disease [14,15]. Limited work has been done on establishing interventions for UK infrastructure development that should lead to sustainable project management, as stated by Ebekozien et al [16].…”

“…According to Macklin et al [30], delays are becoming more common, and there are multiple uncertain factors present in every infrastructure development project, which can also increase the chances of conficts among all parties [30]. Furthermore, Bardos et al [14] and Pereira Morais and Bacic [31] stated that it has been reported that maximization of sustainability in project management can be an efective solution, regardless of the fact that it depends on the competitive advantage of construction organizations involved in infrastructure development projects [14,31]. According to Alaloul et al [32], it is the reason that signifcant evolution is always needed in terms of improving the sustainability of solutions while considering strengthening of construction organization [32].…”

Sustainable remediation column: Sustainable remediation tools

“…It has set out sustainability indicators that are aligned and mapped to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Bardos et al, 2018;CL:AIRE, 2020b) and are readily transferable to a wide range of projects and locations. A clear rationale for these indicators has been provided (Bardos et al, 2020). Some indicators are easy to measure and quantify.…”