| dc.description.abstract | River facilities are important infrastructure for a nation. Facing the global warming and climate change problems, it is imperative to increase the sustainability of the facilities to mitigate the impacts brought about by the problems. Although many studies and discussions on sustainable construction have been made, how to implement the studies’ results through effective regulations and guides is still unavailable.
This research develops a life-cycle sustainability appraisal system for project-level river facilities constructions. The main objective is to help design and manage river facilities constructions in a more sustainable fashion. Literature reviews, expert interviews, and group discussions with engineers are conducted to initially develop this system. This system consists of eight index categories, namely efficiency, ecology, safety, energy conservation, waste reduction, durability, humanities and culture, and creativity. Under the eight categories there are totally 47 sub-indices and 76 evaluation items (34 items for design phase, 22 items for construction phase, and 20 items for maintenance and operation phase). In addition, after all the items have been developed, this research uses MCA (Multi-Criteria Analysis) methodology to analyze the benefits and difficulties of each item, and then utilizes the ratio of benefits and difficulties to calculate the scores for each item. The full mark is 70 points for items in design phase, 45 points for items in construction phase and 40 points for items in maintenance and operation phase. Finally, a preliminary certification system is developed in which three certification levels, Certified, Good, and Excellent, are designed, and the thresholds for different certification levels for each phase are determined based on the testing results of case projects.
The developed appraisal system is tested on 29 projects, in which 20 projects are in the design and construction phase and nine projects in the maintenance and operation phase. The test results show that for design phase, 10 projects get Certified level certification, one project get Good level and one project get Excellent level ; for construction phase, four projects get Certified level and two projects get Good level; and for maintenance and operation phase, one project is Certified and two projects are Good. The results demonstrate the system’s capability of differentiating the river facility projects by their sustainability. The testing also reveals the developed appraisal system’s operability and applicability. | en_US |