Sustainable development, a new interdisciplinary paradigm, is attracting increasing
attention from the global research community. It is an enhancement of sustainability
principles. This study documents the findings from applying a sustainability assessment
model framework by Koo and Ariaratnam (2008) for decision support in connection with
the projection of major infrastructure investment in a port. The objective of this
study is to support the decision-making process in a port development project and
to verify the applicability of sustainability assessment using a sustainability assessment
model for a terminal development project in an urban area of Scandinavia. The sustainability
assessment model is based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). A literature review
of sustainability assessment models was conducted to find indicators for the AHP approach.
Subsequently, a questionnaire was compiled and six decision-makers for projects in
Scandinavian Ports in urban areas were selected for the case study. The hypothesis
is that decision-makers of major infrastructure investment projects in publicly owned
ports must adhere to sustainable development principles and support the United Nations
sustainable development goals that are a call for action by all countries. When documenting
a sustainable design of port projects, decision-makers use theoretical sustainability
models to conceptualize features of a sustainable society. However, a major challenge
for the decision-makers was that the sustainability assessment results did not show,
as expected, the same results as those of three existing theoretical sustainability
models. The results of the sustainability assessment model were scrutinised and benchmarked
against existing theoretical sustainability models, namely: a sustainability stool,
a 3-overlappingcircles model, and a 3-nesteddependencies model. The benchmark results
indicate a disparity between the importance of what sustainability models describe
and what is important in practice.
