Stakeholder-sensitive social welfare-oriented benefit analysis for sustainable infrastructure project development

There is a need for better involving stakeholders in the development of sustainable civil infrastructure systems and for incorporating their input in the decision-making process. In this paper, we present a new model for analyzing the sustainability of infrastructure project alternatives from a stakeholder-centric perspective: the stakeholder-sensitive, social welfare-oriented sustainability benefit analysis model (S3 Model). The model evaluates infrastructure project alternatives based on a proposed sustainable construction social welfare function (SC-SWF). The SC-SWF is a measure of the collective social, environmental, and economic benefits to all stakeholders. It can help identify project solutions that offer social (group) welfare based on the social, environmental, and economic benefits to individual stakeholders. The theoretical foundation of the proposed SC-SWF is grounded in the areas of social choice theory and social welfare theory. The proposed model and its practical application are illustrated through a hypothetical case study. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by advancing the knowledge in the area of social welfare theory and the fundamental research in infrastructure system decision theory. The proposed analysis may guide infrastructure system decision making and may lead to better understanding of how to plan and design infrastructure systems in a way that maximizes the collective social, environmental, and economic benefits to stakeholders.