Sustainability for Infrastructures - The ENVISION Protocol

The ENVISION™ rating system

ENVISION™ is the result of a strategic alliance and collaboration of several American organizations, including the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI), a non-profit organization and Zofnass Programme, at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (Cambridge, Massachusetts).

ENVISION™ main objective is to extend the principles of efficiency and sustainability, today applied to Green Buildings, also to the field of infrastructure. These works deals with all sectors, such as:

ENERGY: electricity power stations of both traditional and renewable energy options
WATER: drinking water systems, storage, wastewater treatment, control of floods
WASTE: landfills, recycling, hazardous waste treatment, collection and storage
TRANSPORTATION: roads, railways, airports, bike paths, public transport, ports, waterways
LANDSCAPE: parks, ecosystems, public spaces
INFORMATION SYSTEMS: telecommunications, Internet, satellite telephony, data centers etc.

Infrastructure, like those mentioned, involve increasingly high demands in terms of resource consumption, for example, of energy and water resources. The works that, since their design phase, intend to go in the opposite direction of the tendency of increasing resources consumption and the negative environmental and social impacts, can now benefit from the guidance and the application of ENVISION™, the first rating system created in the United States, to evaluate and recognize sustainable performance of civil infrastructures.