Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1. Review of selected evaluations methods and airport environmental practices
Sector / Item
Description
Reference
Airports
• Industry-wide data
− Airports Council International (ACI) EONS
− Global Reporting Initiative (GRI),
Sustainability Reporting at Airports
− Transportation Research Board,
Airport Sustainability Practices
(ACI, 2009b)
(GRI, 2009)
(Airport Futures PAG, 2009)
• Case studies
− Port of Seattle, Managing a Green Airport
− British Airport Authority, Heathrow
− San Diego, Destination Lindbergh
− Port of Portland, Airport Futures
(Port of Seattle, 2007)
(BAA Heathrow, 2007)
(Jacobs Consultancy, 2009)
(Airport Futures PAG, 2009)
• Individual sustainability
guides
− Chicago O'Hare Modernization Program
− Los Angeles World Airports
(City of Chicago OMP, 2003)
(LAWA, 2009)
Other sectors
• Green building certification
frameworks
− United States Green Building Council Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
− Haute Qualité Environnementale (HQE)
− BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM)
(USGBC, 2008)
(Association HQE, 2006)
(BREEAM, 2009)
• Environmental evaluation
frameworks
− Evaluation Framework of Environmental Impacts and
Costs of Transport Initiatives (EFECT)
− U.S. NIST Building for Environmental and Economic
Sustainability (BEES)
− U.S. EPA Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of
Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts (TRACI)
(Tsamboulas & Mikroudis, 2000)
(Lippiatt & Boyles, 2001)
(Bare, Norris, Pennington, & McKone,
2002)
projects and to handle the evaluation criteria in
the most transparent manner.
they have the potential to provide decision makers
with a measure of relevant performance, but also
to flag problem areas (Jasch, 2000). While several
frameworks exist for indicating the sustainability
of a system, we have selected an impact-based
approach that focuses on the nature and extent of
various kinds of impacts on the airport system,
without necessarily capturing causal factors and
corrective actions (Jeon & Amekudzi, 2005).
We begin with a definition of sustainability
goals. The basic research question is “Which
alternative is the most environmentally sustain-
able?” Opinions from industry and academia help
define the concept of environmental sustainability
at the planning and design stages of an airport's
life-cycle. In this chapter, we provide a paradigm
inspired by the procedure for life-cycle assess-
ment (LCA) outlined in the international standard
ISO 14040 (ISO, 2006). The definition of the
environmental sustainability of each evaluated
alternative is established along three guidelines.
Definition of Environmental
Sustainability
The primary challenge of this evaluation is its
need to use the fewest and most readily available
performance data to build an adequate understand-
ing of the sustainability of the system. To achieve
this, we suggest defining the environmental
sustainability of an alternative with recourse to a
hierarchical structure that organizes a selection
of impact categories with functional areas and
relates these parameters to specific criteria (the
elements forming the decision), objectives (the
intent toward a specific criteria), and indicators
(metrics used for assessing a particular criteria).
Performance indicators serve as proxies for mea-
suring the overall performance of the system and
limit the need for gathering data. Carefully chosen,
