About six months after the Envision infrastructure project sustainability rating tool launched in 2012, Superstorm Sandy generated $68.7 billion in damage. Six years and several storms later, the latest version of Envision, just released by Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure, includes new emphasis on resilience and economics in its rating process.
“Resilience has really developed,” says Anthony Kane, managing director of ISI, which was founded by three major engineering and public works groups to manage the Envision rating process in collaboration with the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at Harvard University. “We thought it was important to revise and update the resilience credits.” Like previous versions, Envision v3 rates projects on other criteria that include impacts on quality of life, leadership, natural world, resource allocation, climate and risk.