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Hillside planning, design, and development require an intensive understanding of human habitats, man–environment interaction, hill environment sensitivities, spatial planning, and design issues to ensure contextually appropriate development. Although numerous tools, techniques, and frameworks have been developed and implemented to assess urban sustainability, these have not been applied to environmentally sensitive hilly areas, nor have their appropriateness been determined. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a new urban sustainability assessment tool (USAT) named the "Sustainable Urban Development of Environmentally Sensitive Hilly Areas Suitability IndeX (SUDESHA-SIX)" to evaluate the sustainability of hillside settlements using an analytical hierarchy process. The methodology combines descriptive and deductive analytical techniques and geographic information systems-based statistical methods. SUDESHA-SIX was first developed some years back and was applied to the New Tehri Township as it received the National Award for Excellence in planning and design in hills in the year 2000 by the then Prime Minister of India. The results showed that out of the six broad factors, "site suitability" was ranked as the most critical factor of environmentally sensitive hilly areas, followed by "built environment," "environment and ecology," "climate and energy," "transportation and connectivity," and "visual resources." When applied to existing projects, the developed tool provided a more objective and detailed information on the urban sustainability of hilly areas, which could help architects, planners, designers, and decision-makers develop strategies to improve the overall urban sustainability of hilly regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing disaster resilience is one of the important research issues for disaster risk management. The process of postdisaster recovery (PDR) involves multiple stakeholders, and their expectations and engagement are considered a key factor for the success of PDR projects. This paper is oriented toward sustainable development, combined with the demands of many stakeholders, and proposes a comprehensive recovery evaluation that considers the sustainability of community resilience. Based on internet public opinion (IPO), a novel method integrating a modified analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and hesitant fuzzy linguistics (HFL) is introduced to guarantee multiple stakeholders' engagement. Specifically, literature research and field interviews are combined with IPO data using text mining techniques to establish evaluation indices. The evaluation results indicate that the overall recovery level of the Lushan earthquake is between fairly and slightly good. It reveals that balances between social (e.g., infrastructure reconstruction, public services and economic recovery, etc.) and individual aspects (e.g., housing allowance, life recovery, mental health, etc.) are needed for recovery improvements. Moreover, housing is regarded as the most urgent and critical task in PDR. Accordingly, increasing requirements for the protection of intangible heritages are anticipated. Finally, possible policies on recovery and poverty alleviation are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) and sustainability have received considerable attention in delivery and execution of transportation infrastructure projects in the United States. Existing sustainability rating tools are neither designed nor suitable for PPPs due to unbalanced weights among the triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability and the lack of additional considerations beyond the TBL. This study proposes and validates an integrated sustainability assessment framework that aims to capture all of the relevant and important decision factors in terms of assessing the sustainability of PPP highway projects in a comprehensive manner. Through literature review, semistructured interviews, and questionnaire surveys featuring Delphi and analytic hierarchy process techniques, a list of applicable assessment factors (five dimensions, 18 indicators, and 65 subindicators) and their respective weights and priorities were identified. Based on these assessment factors, the proposed framework seeks to determine PPP projects’ level of achievement in terms of sustainable practices. The framework was validated for its applicability and usability for US PPP highway projects through an online survey. Results show that the economic/ financial dimension is the most important dimension for highway PPP experts, followed by contractual, technical, environmental, and social dimensions in descending order by relative importance. This calls for additional attention to be paid to environmental and social sustainability considerations in PPP highway projects. Meanwhile, the results also reflect an urgent need for improved sustainability planning and awareness among stakeholders of PPP highway projects [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction industry compromises the sustainability of the built environment because of its adverse impacts on the environment, economy, and society. In response, green building (GB) projects advocate for targeted sustainability goals while some particular risks in GB projects could cause several unfavorable outcomes. This study aims to assess the life cycle risks of GB projects and emphasize the role of stakeholders in the management of corresponding risks in a four-step analysis procedure. In the first two steps, a comprehensive literature review and focus-group discussion were employed to construct the decision-making framework suitable to the GB life cycle. A fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was used to prioritize the identified risks based on expert opinions. The fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) was used to associate stakeholders' role with the management of GB risks that might arise throughout GB projects. Findings indicate that lack of experienced green construction staff, limited availability and reliability of green subcontractors and suppliers for the specific requirements of GB, and inflation of green materials' prices are ranked as the most significant risks. A generic life cycle risk management framework for green buildings was developed to analyze the most significant risks and corresponding stakeholders. By addressing the gap in the literature, this study is expected to engage practitioners and GB project stakeholders for more effective and robust risk management frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cases where the use of a prefabricated housing system is necessary, the lack of a proper decision-making model for selecting an affordable prefabricated housing system can lead to the selection of an unsuitable system, deviation from project goals, loss of employer capital, and depriving residents comfort. Accordingly, this study aims to propose a decision-making model for the selection of an affordable prefabricated housing system for Iran. The research method of the present article is descriptive-analytic, in which Delphi and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) are used for data analysis, and the research subjects who filled up questionnaires included 150 experts. Using the Delphi method, 25 important criteria and 5 decision dimensions were identified. Then, using the AHP method, it was found that the decision-making dimension of sustainability (with 7 specific criteria) was the most important and the ecoMOD was the most affordable prefabricated system. According to the results, decision makers in the construction industry in Iran are suggested to consider seven criteria of the sustainability dimension for selecting a system before any other criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]