Measuring Social Value In Rail Infrastructure Projects: A System Dynamic Approach

Social value refers to the social impact that a development makes to society for improving the economic, social and environmental wellbeing. The creation of social value is particularly relevant in the built environment for realising sustainable development goals. The built environment has a major impact on the local economy development, the wellbeing of individuals and communities, and environment regeneration through construction and management of infrastructure projects. Measuring social value in infrastructure projects encourages sustainable buildings through considering social contribution beyond economic returns. Although attention has been given to social value measurement, one of the main limitations of existing tools is that they do not take systems thinking that explicitly illustrates social value creation as an interaction process between a project and its environment over time. This paper addresses this issue by describing a system dynamics approach that can measure social value of rail infrastructure projects through the application of systems thinking. The application of this approach is illustrated through a case study, the Crossrail project in the UK.