1.12 Sustainable analysis for smart maintenance

Challenge

To enhance sustainability, tools are needed that are applicable in the actual planning and design processes. The demand for increased sustainable development—considering environmental, economic, and social aspects—requires that these dimensions be addressed throughout the entire life cycle of a construction project, or more precisely, from cradle to cradle. These considerations must be integrated already in the planning and construction phases.

Expected results

SUNRA is intended to support a structured approach to sustainability issues in road and railway projects. The tool also identifies and highlights potential goal conflicts, allowing them to be addressed early in the process in a cost-effective manner and helping to avoid delays in later stages.

With SUNRA, project teams can actively set goals for how a road project will contribute to sustainable development, taking into account environmental, social, and economic aspects. The tool will also be used to follow up on these goals. The aim is to raise the level of ambition for sustainability in a specific project by setting higher and/or additional goals beyond the existing requirements set by the Swedish Transport Administration.

In this project, SUNRA will be updated, simplified, and tested for use in sustainability planning and follow-up, with a focus on the operation and maintenance phase. In order to be useful, collaboration with the Swedish Transport Administration, consultants, and other users is essential. The result will be a tool that enables more efficient and sustainable maintenance, along with a simplified version of the tool suitable for use in smaller projects.