A Risk-Informed Sustainability Index for Infrastructure Drainage Projects: A Fuzzy Decision-Making Framework

Infrastructure drainage projects play a critical role in urban development but are increasingly exposed to environmental, operational, and climate-related risks that challenge their long-term sustainability. Despite this, decision-makers continue to lack risk-informed, structured methods to assess sustainability performance in an uncertain environment. In order to facilitate evidence-based decision-making and sustainable risk management, this study suggests a risk-informed sustainability index for infrastructure drainage projects. The study first points out a weakness in the methods currently used for sustainability assessments, specifically the lack of risk-sensitive, standardized frameworks designed for drainage infrastructure systems. Altogether, 28 sustainability indicators are identified, with 22 indicators retained after the application of fuzzy set theory criteria. The sustainability index is developed by normalizing, weighting, and combining these indicators using a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method. To show the usefulness and practicality of the suggested approach in assessing sustainability performance and pinpointing risk-critical improvement areas, it is used for a long-term infrastructure drainage project. In order to improve infrastructure resilience, the findings emphasize the significance of early integration of sustainability and risk considerations, stakeholder engagement, and ongoing performance monitoring. The suggested approach offers a flexible and transferable framework for risk-informed decision-making, assisting engineers, project managers, and policymakers in enhancing the resilience and sustainability of infrastructure drainage systems.