Social and environmental sustainability of trenchless technologies

Sustainable development is an emerging, multi-disciplinary paradigm receiving considerable attention throughout the global community. The concept of sustainable development has emerged as a viable alternative to ensuring future human prosperity. Recognition of the urgency to curb environmental impacts of construction operations worldwide has led to an increase in research efforts aimed at developing methods to quantify these impacts. When examining sustainability, the tendency is to categorize into three pillars: social; environmental; and economic. A balance between these three pillars is critical to the overall goal of creating a stable and sustainable environment. Many researchers have conducted studies on economic and environmental impacts of various construction methods for installing underground utilities; however, few have looked at the context of social sustainability. This paper discusses sustainability of employing trenchless technologies from both social and environmental frameworks with comparisons to traditional open trenching construction. In this context, trenchless technologies offer advantages in installing new utilities and rehabilitating existing infrastructure by using "green" principles. The use of multiple construction equipment during open-cut construction invariably results in considerably more impacts compared to employing trenchless methods, which have reduced surface disturbances.