Sustainability assessment and the revitalization of contaminated sites: operationalizing sustainable development for local problems

The problem of contamination of soil and groundwater has only been discussed widely in industrialized countries since the 1970s. Since the 1980s, when the debate on sustainable development began to be taken up in urban and regional planning, soil was increasingly seen as a scarce and non-renewable resource. Consequently, the goal of brownfield redevelopment became an urgent issue in policy circles. Because revitalization of contaminated brownfield areas is characterized by many uncertainties and complex decision-making processes, there is a growing need for generic decision-support systems. In this paper we discuss the development of a systematic approach aimed at assessing different land-use scenarios for a contaminated site in terms of their sustainability value as part of a computer-based module. The overall management system, of which sustainability indicator development discussed in this paper is but one part, supports users in developing a case-specific set of criteria for sustainable development. In this paper, we present and critically discuss this new sustainability assessment module. We describe the different steps of the indicator development process and discuss areas that need to be improved in order to derive answers that reach beyond the field of contaminated site management.