The Australian Green Infrastructure Council has launched the nation’s first national scheme for rating infrastructure sustainability. The rating system has been developed co-operatively with many of the AGIC’s membership organisations.

 

Backed with $500,000 in Federal funding, the system has been developed with the support and cooperation of industry and government agencies throughout Australia and will aim to rate all infrastructure asset types from railways to ports, sewers and cycleways.

 

“It will help us assess the quality of management systems, the process of procurement and purchasing, how a piece of infrastructure can adapt to climate change and what it will discharge into land, air and water,” Federal Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese said.

 

“The scheme is voluntary and helps create better, more sustainable ways of designing, building and operating infrastructure which can then be marked with a rating level.”

 

“It demystifies the whole question of what exactly we mean by economic, social and environmental sustainability.”

 

The AGIC has embedded the Urban Design Protocol into the new rating tool to assit in the assessment in road and rail projects.