The Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) and the American Water Works Association (AWWA) announced that they will partner in developing a new sustainability framework for evaluating and rating the community, environmental and economic benefits of water infrastructure projects.
The Envision Rating System, developed in collaboration between ISI in Washington, D.C. and the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., evaluates, grades and gives recognition to infrastructure projects that use transformational, collaborative approaches to assess the sustainability indicators over the course of the project's life cycle.
AWWA is partnering with ISI to help represent the water sector and assist in developing a rating system to accurately evaluate underground water infrastructure projects across the United States through cost assessment, environmental evaluations, outcome-based objectives and achievement of higher levels of sustainability.
“We are a society dependent upon our infrastructure and there is no more important element of that infrastructure than water,” said Bill Bertera, executive director of ISI. “The intimate link between that infrastructure and our need to make it sustainable is embodied in our partnership with AWWA, an organization with a long and distinguished history of serving the public interest.”
“We are very excited to partner with ISI,” said AWWA Executive Director David LaFrance. “Sustainability is critical to the water sector’s future and to the customers we serve. AWWA members are among the leading experts in the world and we look forward to helping bring their collective knowledge and that of experts from other parts of the water sector to the collaborative, important and exciting work of ISI.”
Source: ISI and AWWA
