| dc.description.abstract | Infrastructure development is vital to a nation’s economic and social growth. For a long time it has been lack of concerns to the environment during the design, constriction and operation of infrastructure. Consequently, resource depletion, energy consumption, air and water pollution, wastes, and impacts to the bio-environment are resulted. Recently, under the global “sustainable development”, enormous efforts have been taken by countries all over the world to enable the symbiosis of human development and the environment.
The objective of this research is to develop an appraisal system for the assessment of green highway construction. Highway is chosen, among the various infrastructure types, for its broad coverage of areas and its larger share of a nation’s infrastructure development. Literature reviews and Delphi method are first employed in this study to identify the major categories and their corresponding items for assessing the “greenness” of a highway project. The six major categories identified are preservation of eco-system, CO2 emission, resources and materials, water resource, waste reduction, and energy conservation. AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) method is then employed to determine the weighting of major categories as well as the sub items in each category. As a result, this study proposes an appraisal rating system to assess the “greenness” of a highway construction project. | en_US |