Nexus Between Design, Technology, Engineering and Management Issues in the delivery of sustainable and resilient infrastructure (SRI) projects

Overview of the special issue

Infrastructure development is key to the achievement of sustainable development goals. Its impact on economic growth as a direct contributor to GDP and as a catalyst for development is well acknowledged. The recent outbreaks of pandemics such as COVID-19 have highlighted the need for efficient infrastructure including water and sanitation, transportation, and healthcare facilities among others.  While developing countries continue to lag in infrastructure development, evidence suggests that there is a significant increase in investment in infrastructure projects. It is critical that as developing countries strive to plug the infrastructure gap, projects should meet sustainability and resilience standards that integrate environmental, social, economic, and governance aspects into a project’s planning, building and operation while ensuring resilience in the face of economic and climatic-related shocks. Professionals from different disciplines and backgrounds contribute to the delivery of infrastructure. However, the architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) industry is fragmented resulting in inefficient project delivery and formulation of sustainable practices for infrastructure delivery that focuses on particular discipline contexts. This fragmentation is also evident in the research on sustainable and resilient infrastructure (SRI) as it tends to focus on one issue at the expense of the other contexts. This special issue encourages interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research that seeks to unravel the nexus between design, technology, engineering, and management issues in SRI delivery within the social-economic-environmental context.

Indicative list of anticipated themes

We welcome high-quality original research papers and state-of-the-art reviews dealing with, but not limited to, the following:

• Emerging/novel technologies for SRI. 
• Governance issues in SRI projects: institutional and legal issues in the delivery of SRI projects, effective sustainability governance structure, stakeholder participation in SRI delivery, and Sustainable infrastructure transitioning.
• Inclusive SRI: social sustainability considerations, gender and disability in sustainable infrastructure design and engineering.
• Financing SRI: financing SRI, critique of existing models for financing SRI, new perspectives on financing infrastructure projects, and private participation in financing SRI.
• Managing SRI: the interdisciplinary context of SRI, strategies and best practices in the design, engineering, and management of SRI projects, challenges and lessons learned in integrating design, technology, and engineering in the management of SRI projects in developing countries.
• New perspectives on integrated solutions in SRI delivery: the complexity of decision-making in SRI design; the complexity of SRI development; Decision-making tools for integrated SRI delivery; Social, economic, and environmental sustainability considerations, Integrating between design, technology, and management for SRI
• Novel models of SRI assessment: indicators for measuring SRI, SRI assessment models, SRI assessment frameworks and guidelines in developing countries.

Submission information

Submissions can be made via the online Scholar One submission system, please see:  https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jedt

Authors must adhere to the Author Guidelines, found here: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/jedt#author-guidelines
 

Submission opens: 1 December 2022

Submission closes: 30 April 2023