Evaluating Technical Alternatives on Basis of Sustainability

The concept of sustainable development has been widely discussed in a number of forums throughout the world. Recent developments, such as the creation of the World Engineering Partnership for Sustainable Development, will greatly aid in advancing the underlying concept beyond the conceptual stage through to the development of practical approaches that engineers can use to sustainably plan, design, and operate engineering projects. Engineering for sustainability will require us as professionals to go significantly beyond traditional technical, engineering economics, and health and safety issues in the comparison and evaluation of project alternatives. In this paper, a set of expanded criteria are described for a broader sustainability-based evaluation process. The sustainability criteria are then applied to a hypothetical example from the municipal solid-waste-management area, to illustrate how the expanded set of criteria could be used to compare technical alternatives by accounting for long-term effects and difficult-to-quantify issues.