Assessment of constructed wetland projects as a multifunction landscape: a case study in Egypt

Abstract

This research aims to develop a conceptual framework and assessment tool to assess sustainability of Multifunction Constructed Wetlands Projects (MCWP). First, by literature review to analyze the main points and identify the gaps in existing research to what concerns viewing constructed wetlands as multifunction sustainable landscape projects. To assess the performance of MCWP, urban sustainability indicators are proposed examining interconnections between environmental, economic and social aspects and their efects on each other. 12 environmental, 9 sociocultural and 7 economic indicators are selected according to their relevance to the United Nations and National Sustainable Development Goals, the impacts of their weights according to a distributed questionnaire showed these percentages: environmental aspects 42%, Socio-cultural aspects 29% and the economic aspects 28%. Also, performance-oriented assessment tools for MCWPs were designed for wastewater treatment. The impacts of proposed indicators are then assessed using the adapted Leopold Matrix method. Hence, this study aims to establish an assessment model to evaluate the sustainability features of MCWPs, by proposing sustainability indicators to be assessed by measurement metrics and respective weights for indicators and sub-indicators.