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How to Calculate and Integrate a Cumulative Social Impact Index in Engineering Projects for more Sustainable Outcomes

Abstract

The decision-making process concern with designing and implementing a planned intervention or project relies often times on economic and technical arguments, expressed as data, indicators, models. This paper argues that projects could benefit out of taking into consideration, aside from this economic and technical dimensions, also aspects regarding the social impact of that respective intervention or project. For the past over 40 years, with applicability especially in engineering domains, Social Impact Assessment (SIA) has been developing tools, methodology, and distinctions to support this idea. SIA implies identifying and managing social impacts generated by planned interventions. This paper is aiming to propose a model that allows integrating all positive and negative social impacts into a single cumulative social impact index. In order to do this, the process requires identifying the social impacts expressed as variables. The challenge in the attempt to use social data is the fact that these variables, which describe the main dimensions of the social context and/or express social processes of change (for example), differ in nature. There could be qualitative or quantitative data, variable with different measurement units and different weights. The model proposes ways to solve these and other challenges, resulting in a general methodology that (following provided guiding principles) could be used by any planned intervention that has a social impact. In addition to this, the model implies the use of participative tools, involving stakeholders into this process. While the process of obtaining all the data integrated into this index is complex, the outcome is a dichotomous variable that is easy to read. Taking into considerations social impacts contributes to increasing the project’s sustainability and reducing possible risks that could emerge if these aspects are disregarded.

 Andreea Ogrezeanu* and Anca Alexandra Purcarea

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