Social aspects in the form of social effects and benefits are becoming more important in the context of assessing different maintenance strategies on road infrastructure networks. Decision makers need to present the consequences of their maintenance strategies and policies on both the technical level and more and more the social level. Recently, European national road administrations came together to discuss how social aspects can be an integrated part in their asset management frameworks.
The trans-national European CEDR-project ISABELA (Integration of social aspects and benefits into lifecycle asset management) was established to define a common basis for the assessment of social effects in the context of asset management. Deighton managed this project and used dTIMS to test different solutions.
Taking such social aspects into account enables us to covey the effects of social effects to different stakeholders (road administration, users, neighbours, society, etc.) as shown in the graphic below. In addition, you can compare different maintenance strategies with their (social) expectations and requirements.
Objectives, Benefits and output of ISABELA
The main objective of ISABELA was to define a holistic asset management framework for social key performance indicators (S-KPIs) and social benefit modelling in form of social effects (monetary and non-monetary), social backlog and social risk. ISABELA provides an essential enhancement for the life-cycle-assessment of maintenance strategies and enables an agency to incorporate social aspects and benefits into classical asset management. ISABELA aims at identifying clear and repeatable social key performance indicators (S-KPI) in combination with existing technical parameters, described in projects like COST354, FORMAT, EVITA, SBAKPI, etc. The use of these new indicators in parallel to existing technical performance indicators helps to underscore the necessity of road infrastructure maintenance. It is the basis for a holistic definition of a new maintenance benefit taking into account the following maintenance aspects:
- Availability and disturbance (travel time, vehicle operating costs)
- Road safety (fatal and severe accidents related to asset condition)
- Environment (noise, air pollution, natural resources)
- Socio-economy (asset value, wider social effects)
As a result of ISABELA a clear and reproducible definition of the necessary basics for social benefit calculations within life-cycle-assessment (LCA), life-cycle-cost-analysis (LCCA) and risk-assessment will be available such as:
- Calculation of social indicators in the context of asset management
- Definition of monetary and non-monetary social effects
- Definition of asset management social backlog and social risk
Using these results, an extended way of benchmarking on the social levels will be possible (national as well as trans-national), taking actual needs and requirements of different stakeholders into account.
ISABELA improves the assessment of the total road infrastructure from a social viewpoint and opens the door to the development of broader asset management processes to meet the future challenges. The proposed social key performance indicators (S-KPIs), and the life-cycle assessment framework in which they are being incorporated and could interact, will be available for advanced management systems.
Implementation and Future Steps
An essential task within ISABELA is the practical implementation of the findings. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a clear and easy-to-use framework to compare different maintenance policies by applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) and Risk Analysis (RA) approaches. Moreover, it is necessary to demonstrate that this methodology is applicable using existing tools after the relevant extensions. Thus, the framework for implementation will be broken down into the following main tasks:
- Implementation of the procedures and models for the calculation of social benefit into the life-cycle assessment and analysis
- Implementation of the procedures and models for the calculation of social benefit into risk analysis
- Extension and test of decision support tools using social benefits calculations
After defining the implementation framework it is planned to apply the procedures in practice on existing networks. This will reveal how social benefit, social risk and social backlog forms a comprehensive basis for the assessment of different maintenance strategies under different stakeholder expectations and requirements.