Multicriteria decision support tool for sustainable remediation including valorisation of waste

In the last two decades, there has been increased recognition of the need to implement sustainability and circularity principles in the environmental site remediation and waste management at industrial facilities. This implies consideration of the environmental, economic and social dimensions as well as waste reduction and the re-use and recycling of residues.

So far, efforts have been directed towards development of sustainability assessment indicators for environmental remediation (e.g. SuRF-UK framework), decision support tools for sustainability assessment ( based on life cycle assessments, cost-benefit analysis or multi-criteria analysis) and environmental and economic models. However, multicriteria decision tools have been either information-based (decoupled from models) or model-based, with limited consideration of the social dimension. Moreover, implementing circularity in site remediation is an important and emerging area of research that has not been fully explored. The management of complex sites, e.g. including different types of wastes (radiological/chemical) and heterogeneous contamination patterns is also generally not included in existing multicriteria decision tools.

Questions that are still open are: How can circularity and sustainability principles be coupled for the environmental management of sites with a mixed (radiological/chemical) contamination? Which indicators can guide the selection of waste valorisation strategies for these sites characterized by a complex contamination? How can complex sites be managed in order to balance the total environmental, economic and social impacts (positive/negative)?

The objective of this PhD research is to develop a multicriteria decision tool for environmental management of contaminated sites that addresses the aforementioned questions. By combining insights from environmental management, sustainability, circularity and multi-criteria decision analysis the tool will operationalize sustainable development and circularity principles, provide information needed for decision-making and stimulate social learning.

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