Volume 1, Issue 1 — Year 2024 — Article e100003

Ali Saedi¹; Mohammad Soltani Asl²; Armin Jarahi³

1. Department of Civil Engineering, Khayyam University, Mashhad 9189747178, Iran
2. Department of Civil Engineering, Khayyam University, Mashhad 9189747178, Iran
3. Department of Civil Engineering, Khayyam University, Mashhad 9189747178, Iran

Environmental management is crucial in infrastructure projects like road construction. It aims to identify how these projects impact the surrounding environment, understand the interactions between the project and its environment, and assess the effectiveness of these impacts. Effective environmental management can lead to optimal design strategies that minimize environmental harm. This study focuses on environmental management in relation to the Southern Belt project in Mashhad. It evaluates the project's environmental impact using sustainable development indicators. The evaluation employs two main approaches: exploratory methods (descriptive-survey) and hierarchical analysis (AHP). The exploratory approach involves both library and field studies to gather information for the AHP analysis. The AHP method, using expert input and questionnaires, assesses the impact of various factors on the environment around the belt. The study identifies eight main factors influencing the project: human, environmental, managerial, social, economic, and political factors. Among these, environmental factors have the most significant impact (47%), followed by political factors (19.4%), while economic factors have the least impact (2.8%). The model’s validity and reliability, assessed using convergence and Cronbach's alpha approaches, show it is valid with coefficients of 0.89 and 0.748, respectively.

Environmental management, Road construction, Exploratory approach, Hierarchical analysis, Mashhad.