SAFIRE- Sustainability Asessment For Improved Remediation Efficiency

Research Project, 2015 – 2018

The main objective of this project is to evaluate how sustainability assessments can improve the efficiency of site remediation in Sweden.

Although remediations provide reduced risks to the environment and human health the Swedish EPA is concerned about the slow progress of remediation and that the national environmental objectives may not be reached. There is also concern that remediations are too expensive, have a low level of innovation, and may result in substantial environmental footprints. It is now widely recognized that sustainability assessments are needed to provide a holistic decision-support for sound prioritizations of remediations.

The SCORE sustainability assessment method, developed at Chalmers, is used in on-going remediation projects to investigate the impact of sustainability assessments on remediation efficiency. The project comprises of 7 work-packages: WP1 is project management and WP7 is dissemination. The project starts with identifying possible indicators and mapping stakeholder views with regard to remediation efficiency (WP2). Then, three WPs on SCORE assessments and efficiency are performed: on how to effectively incorporate SCORE in the remediation process (WP3), on what impacts SCORE may have on the selection of remediation designs (WP4), and on what impact SCORE assessments have on the remediation efficiency (WP5). Finally, the learning process for stakeholders as a result of implementing sustainability assessment is evaluated (WP6).

Keywords: sustainable remediation, efficient remediation, efficiency, sustainability assessment, remediation, contaminated sites, SCORE

The project is carried out at the division of geology and geotechnics, research group environmental geology – land and water resources, department of architecture and civil engineering also at FRIST Competence centre.