Sustainable transportation indicators are measurement tools that can help assess how sustainable infrastructure projects are. Some key indicators relate to the economic, environmental, social, and technical dimensions of sustainability. For the economic dimension, common indicators include impact on the economy, willingness to pay, affordability, costs, and financial factors. Environmental indicators may track pollution, waste generation, ecological impacts, and climate emissions. Social indicators can include employment, health, safety, public participation, and cultural heritage. Technical indicators assess performance, reliability, durability, flexibility, resilience, and vulnerability of the transportation system. Sustainable indicators aim to simplify complex sustainability assessments and support decision-making around transportation planning and projects.

1. Sustainable Transportation
Indicators
Dr. Badr Alsulami

2. Sustainable Indicators
Sustainable Indicators have been considered as a
primary method to transfer sustainability theory into
practical measurement tools to measure sustainability
(Bockermann, Meyer, Omann, & Spangenberg, 2000).

3. Sustainable Indicators
An indicator is usually defined as a piece of
information that has a wider significance than
its immediate meaning (Bakkes, 1994).
Generally, an indicator is a named performance
indicator if it has a linkage to a criterion, a goal
or an aim, also in case of a combination of
several indicators, the list is called an index. A
set of indexes (an indice) represents a larger
issue (Lundin, 2003).

4. The information pyramid (Braat, 1991)

5. The need for SIs in Transportation
The need simplified indicators of causal
connections in order to take into account the
requirements of economic, social, technical, and
environmental sustainable development. The
indicators are also essential for the following
three practical reasons:

6. The need for SIs in Transportation
First, important decisions are required to be made in
the early phases of the infrastructure project delivery
process. In the context of strategic planning, and initial
planning, design and project planning, there is
insufficient data to enable an informed consideration of
the sustainability effects, based on a deep impact
assessment; thus simplified indicators are required.

7. The need for SIs in Transportation
Second, the indicators are essential because of the
complexity of the case. In extensive projects or
processes, it is too difficult or time consuming to gather
comprehensive data in order to thoroughly assesses
the sustainability impact. Therefore, simple indicators
are ideal for this purpose.

8. The need for SIs in Transportation
Third, planners, developers and designers need SIs to objectively
consider the sustainability aspects. On the other hand, to
develop their own activities and to make it possible for owners
and contractors to declare requirements for project parties,
indicators that express the effectiveness and superiority of the
activities, from a sustainability approach, are essential.
However, the selection of the number of indicators for
assessment must be kept fairly small, which means that
identification of relevant indicators is necessary (Kuckshinrichs et
al., 2006).

9. Economic Sustainability
At the macro level, the most frequent indicators utilized
in the literature to quantify the economic dimension
are improvement in the economy, willingness to pay,
and affordability.
1.Economic improvement: is used to indicate the
degree of contribution from the infrastructure system
to the development of the economic status of a region
that will be served by the proposed infrastructure
project (Bobylev, 2006)

10. Economic Sustainability
2. Willingness to pay:
The willingness to pay (WTP) is the highest price
that an individual is willing to accept to pay for
some good or service (Breidert, 2005).
3. Affordability:
the ability of the users and consumers to pay for
the services delivered (Choguill, 1996).

11. Economic Sustainability
At the infrastructure system level, the economic
indicators include:
1. the initial cost (Shen et al., 2011).
2. The life cycle costs.
such as operations and maintenance; the repair
and rehabilitation costs; and the demolition and
disposal costs (Ding, 2008).

12. Economic Sustainability
3. The cost of the employment (Ding, 2008).
4. Financial return (Shen et al., 2007).
5. Financial risk exposure for capital investment.
it relates to the risk of loss to the company
associated with particular kinds of investment
(Ashley et al., 2003).

13. Environmental Sustainability
1. Air, water, and noise pollution:
The air, water, and noise pollution indicators are
frequently used to measure the impact of
infrastructure in atmosphere and water bodies,
as well as the health and behavior of people (El-
Diraby et al. 2005).

14. Environmental Sustainability
2. Waste generation:
is used to quantify infrastructure system waste
production output; that output could occur at
any life phase of the infrastructure system, such
as in the construction phase (i.e. solid waste is
generated from construction activities) (Matar
et al., 2008).

15. Environmental Sustainability
3. Ecological impacts:
cover a range of impacts on water, land, air and
biodiversity; resource utilization covers the use
of water resources, land, energy, materials and
chemicals (Foxon et al. 2002).
4. Climate change emission

16. Social Sustainability
The Measuring the social aspect of a CIS is typically
achieved through social indicators. However, these
indicators are much more difficult to calculate and, as
such have not received much attention in the
engineering literature.

17. Social Sustainability
The majority of the research into the social
sustainability of CIS (Ashley et al., 2008; and El-
Diraby et al. 2005) lists:
1. Employment,
Employment can measure how the CIS can
enhance employment opportunities in the
system area (Brent & Labuschagne, 2004).

18. Social Sustainability
2. human health,
the human health indicator can identify the
impact of risks to human health, such as the lack
of availability of clean water, the risk of
infection, and the exposure to toxic compounds
(Ugwu & Haupt 2007).

19. Social Sustainability
3. impact on safety,
4. acceptability
5. Stakeholders’ participation
Includes individual actions, participation in decision-
making and willingness to change behaviour (Oltean-
Dumbrava & Ashley 2006).

20. Social Sustainability
6.Public awareness:
covers awareness of the implications of behaviour and
consumer information (Makropoulos et al. 2008).
7. Heritage and culture:
addresses the impact of the proposed infrastructure
project on the local culture and heritage of the project
area, such as heritage buildings (Bobylev, 2006).

21. Technical Sustainability
The technical dimension should be taken into account
due to the significance of this dimension in the
sustainability assessment process of the performance
for CIS.
1. Performance
Performance of the system includes the quality of
providing the service or product.

22. Technical Sustainability
2. Reliability:
represents the probability of a system successful state,
it is a complementary item to risk, which represents the
frequency of a system failure.
3. Durability:
Long-term behavior is affected by the variation in
mechanical properties over the design life of the
structure. This includes environmental and time-
dependent effects and their interaction.

23. Technical Sustainability
4. Flexibility and adaptability:
Covers the ability to make future changes to the system
to accommodate future needs.
5. Resilience:
The probability of recovery of the system from failure
to some acceptable state within a specified time
interval.

24. Technical Sustainability
6. Vulnerability:
Represents the severity or magnitude of a system
failure.
(Foxon et al., 2002; Moy, Cohon, & Revelle, 1986; Porter & Harries, 2007)

25. The End
?