Progress and Recommendations for Advancing Performance-Based Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure Design

Abstract

Increasing variability in climate and environmental degradation call for an infrastructure design paradigm that considers both sustainability and resilience using performance-based metrics. This paper discusses recent progress in this direction, including recent and emerging infrastructure rating systems, design technologies and tools, and examples of sustainable and resilience infrastructure projects. Recommendations are made for new research, development of new technologies and tools, and policy changes needed to further advance progress towards integrating performance-based approaches across the entire design cycle. These include a call for improved models and tools to better evaluate the full suite of infrastructure costs and benefits, both internally and externally; multicriteria design to assess tradeoffs among all costs and benefits at multiple scales; and an iterative design cycle based on measurable performance criteria.