Inclusion of social indicators in decision support tools for the selection of sustainable site remediation options

Abstract

Sustainable remediation requires a balanced decision-making process in which environmental, economic and social aspects of different remediation options are all considered together and the optimum remediation solution is selected. More attention has been paid to the evaluation of environmental and economic aspects, in particular to reduce the human and environmental risks and the remediation costs, to the exclusion of social aspects of remediation. This paper investigates how social aspects are currently considered in sustainability assessments of remediation projects. A selection of decision support tools (DSTs), used for the sustainability assessment of a remediation project, is analyzed to define how social aspects are considered in those tools. The social indicator categories of the Sustainable Remediation Forum - United Kingdom (SuRF-UK), are used as a basis for this evaluation. The consideration of social aspects in the investigated decision support tools is limited, but a clear increase is noticed in more recently developed tools. Among the five social indicator categories defined by SuRF-UK to facilitate a holistic consideration of social aspects of a remediation project only "Human health and safety" is systematically taken into account. "Neighbourhood and locality" is also often addressed, mostly emphasizing the potential disturbance caused by the remediation activities. However, the evaluation of 'Ethics and Equality', Communities and community involvement', and 'Uncertainty and evidence' is often neglected. Nevertheless, concrete examples can be found in some of the investigated tools. Specific legislation, standard procedures, and guidelines that have to be followed in a region or country are mainly been set up in the context of protecting human and ecosystem health, safety and prevention of nuisance. However, they sometimes already include some of the aspects addressed by the social indicators. In this perspective the use of DST to evaluate the sustainability of a site remediation project, should be tuned to the legislation, guidelines and procedures that are in force in a specific country or region.

Keywords: Communication; Health and safety; Site remediation; Social indicators; Stakeholders; Sustainability assessment; Sustainable remediation.