A Systematic Literature Review on Local Sustainability Assessment Processes for Infrastructure Development Projects in Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Thank your your revision and considerable improvements in the manuscript. You have done extensive work with a long list of references.

There are a few major issues that I belive need to fixed to improve the manuscript.

The title sets the scope and needs to correspond to research questions.

"A systematic literature review on local infrastructure sustainability assessment processes in Africa"

Systematic is explained. I am not sure what is meant by local and why this is important. Is the assessment process depending on locality? Sustainability priorities are contextual but the systems assessing sustainabilty could be the same. Most standards are universal. Even if local becomes national as it seems the importance of this is still questionable. 

You might want to be clear on what a process is as with many other expressions where a variety of expressions exist ... and then be clear on what your interpretation is. I have made comments on words such as tools, sustainability, sustainable development and dimensions. A further comment on process. This is often used for something that never ends - like the Middle East peace process. In business there is Business Process Management where a process is idtenfied by a process chart having an input and output and also having a process owner. What are the processes you have studied? 

Your write: "The aim of this review was to identify and analyse local sustainability assessment processes for infrastructure projects in Africa so as to document the progress made in creating local sustainability assessment processes and identify the gaps in sustainability assessment research for in- frastructure projects in Africa."

This is a limitation compared to the title.

The introduction might need to be extended to make it easier for the average reader to understand why assessments of anything matter. How does an assessment contribute to sustainability of e.g. roads infrastructure. In Africa the main issue would be financing and who the financer is. The EIA which you mention (and exclude) would be required in World Bank financing but might be different when China is the financer. What kind of a problem is lack of good infrastructure sustainability assessment for sustainable infrastructure? Will a perfect assessment make infrastructure sustainable?  

You delimit infrastructure to energy, transport, water supply, sanitation and sewage (waste), and communications which is OK. You might want to clarify what is the difference between transport and communications? At this stage, using an outside in approach (which is used in process management) you would ask which the main sustainabilty impacts are in the six chosen areas. Here it would have been convenient to link to the UN SDGs which also apply in Africa. At least you would need to explain why it was logical not to include them.

The method has some problems.

For the question of how many assessments are found it is fine. But for explaining how assessments are done in Africa a sample of six becomes anecdotic. What is the value of the detailed information? It shows that assessments varies but how could a researcher use this for further work?

You could have looked at benchmark global assessments processes and viewed them critically to see what would need to be adapted for African purposes if the aim is to improve assessments.

It seems that you based on different references have put together you 10 dimensions and ensuing themes. If this is correct you should present these as proposed and motivate why you needed to create your own systems. 

The dominating framework for sustainbility reporting is the GRI set of standards. These are used to assess organisations which could be infrastructue companies. They used the traditional Triple Bottom Line approach - the tree dimensions. You start with this but then you suddenly have 10 dimensions which are a mix of things. The TBL has a focus on the output - what a process delivers. The GRI also mix cause and effect but systematically linking it to one of the tree dimensions. 

 Your 10 dimensions and the multitude of themes seems to be something you have put together now. As I understand it, it is not validated. And, for me it is not logical and does not relate to the main impacts that should have been addressed in the 6 different areas of infrastructure. Any good assessment needs to identify the right things (the vital issues) in the right way (using good KPIs and having needs based goals). 

The content base data analysis needs according to my opinion to be redone based on a commonly accepted logic. 

The conclusions are very vague (see comments in attached manuscript)

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1. "A systematic literature review on local infrastructure sustainability assessment processes in Africa". Systematic is explained. I am not sure what is meant by local and why this is important. Is the assessment process depending on locality? Sustainability priorities are contextual but the systems assessing sustainability could be the same. Most standards are universal. Even if local becomes national as it seems the importance of this is still questionable.

Response: Noted. An explanation on local sustainability assessment processes has been given. As well as the importance of having local processes as opposed to international processes and their customised versions has been given.

2. You might want to be clear on what a process is as with many other expressions where a variety of expressions exist ... and then be clear on what your interpretation is. I have made comments on words such as tools, sustainability, sustainable development, and dimensions. A further comment on process. This is often used for something that never ends - like the Middle East peace process. In business there is Business Process Management where a process is identified by a process chart having an input and output and also having a process owner. What are the processes you have studied?

Response: Noted. The review has been revised to include a paragraph on impact assessment processes because sustainability assessment falls under impact assessment processes. It also distinguishes between ex-ante and ex-post impact assessment and indicates that sustainability assessment is an ex-ante process thus setting a boundary on the perceived “continuity nature” of processes.   

3.You write: "The aim of this review was to identify and analyse local sustainability assessment processes for infrastructure projects in Africa so as to document the progress made in creating local sustainability assessment processes and identify the gaps in sustainability assessment research for infrastructure projects in Africa." This is a limitation compared to the title.

Response: Noted. The title has been revised to reflect that the review will be limited to infrastructure development projects.

4. The introduction might need to be extended to make it easier for the average reader to understand why assessments of anything matter. How does an assessment contribute to sustainability of e.g., roads infrastructure. In Africa the main issue would be financing and who the financer is. The EIA which you mention (and exclude) would be required in World Bank financing but might be different when China is the financer. What kind of a problem is lack of good infrastructure sustainability assessment for sustainable infrastructure? Will a perfect assessment make infrastructure sustainable?

Response: Noted. A paragraph on impact assessments, their usage, functions, and benefits has been added. Examples on impact assessments have also been given. The contribution of sustainability assessment in sustainable infrastructure has also been mentioned in the following paragraph.

5. You delimit infrastructure to energy, transport, water supply, sanitation and sewage (waste), and communications which is OK. You might want to clarify what is the difference between transport and communications? At this stage, using an outside in approach (which is used in process management) you would ask which the main sustainability impacts are in the six chosen areas. Here it would have been convenient to link to the UN SDGs which also apply in Africa. At least you would need to explain why it was logical not to include them.

 Response: Noted. An explanation of each infrastructure type has been added. Also, Table 1 has been revised to link the infrastructure types to the UN SDGs.  And the discussion section has been increase to include the connection/ link between the sustainability themes and the SDG targets.

6. For the question of how many assessments are found it is fine. But for explaining how assessments are done in Africa a sample of six becomes anecdotic. What is the value of the detailed information? It shows that assessments vary but how could a researcher use this for further work?

 Response: Noted. The review has been revised to include a paragraph of international assessment processes, customized international assessment process and local sustainability assessment process and their use in developing countries. So local processes are not the only processes used in Africa. This review focuses on local processes and highlights the few processes that have been created and the lag in research in this area. Further research can be done to create local processes. Also, the information on content-based data can be used to understand the local sustainability issues and help in creating other local processes or customizing international processes to address these issues.

7. You could have looked at benchmark global assessments processes and viewed them critically to see what would need to be adapted for African purposes if the aim is to improve assessments.

 Response: Noted. The review has been revised to include a paragraph of international assessment processes and customized international assessment process. It also includes criticism on their use in developing countries and an explanation on why scholars have opted to create local sustainability assessment processes, which are the focus of this review.

8. It seems that you based on different references have put together you 10 dimensions and ensuing themes. If this is correct you should present these as proposed and motivate why you needed to create your own systems.

Response: The sustainability dimensions and themes were extracted from the studies selected for review. One of the aims of the review was to document the content/structure of the sustainability assessment processes that were selected – sustainability dimensions and themes. The 10 dimensions and ensuing themes are not the Author’s proposal but a direct extraction of dimensions and themes that already exist in literature (the primary sources/ selected studies for the review).

9. The dominating framework for sustainability reporting is the GRI set of standards. These are used to assess organizations which could be infrastructure companies. They used the traditional Triple Bottom Line approach - the three dimensions. You start with this but then you suddenly have 10 dimensions which are a mix of things. The TBL has a focus on the output - what a process delivers. The GRI also mix cause and effect but systematically linking it to one of the tree dimensions.

 Response: The specific comments on the sustainability dimensions have been addressed. The responses to these comments have been provided in the attached pdf document.

10. Your 10 dimensions and the multitude of themes seems to be something you have put together now. As I understand it, it is not validated. And, for me it is not logical and does not relate to the main impacts that should have been addressed in the 6 different areas of infrastructure. Any good assessment needs to identify the right things (the vital issues) in the right way (using good KPIs and having needs-based goals).

 Response: The specific comments on the sustainability dimensions and themes have been addressed. The responses to these comments have been provided in the attached pdf document.

11. The content base data analysis needs according to my opinion to be redone based on a commonly accepted logic.

Response: The specific comments on the content based data have been addressed. The responses to these comments have been provided in the attached pdf document.

 12. The conclusions are very vague (see comments in attached manuscript)

Response: The conclusions have been revised for clarity.  

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The article analyzes a very interesting and modern topic. Nevertheless, to improve the article, we can identify some improvements, such as:

1. There is no proper reference of the bibliographic sources within the text. For example, from the very beginning of the text (for example lines 31 to 35) the bibliographical sources are mentioned numerically and not the names of the authors.

2. The "2.5. Selection process" must be more detailed, with more emphasis on keywords, as it is a very important parameter for the overall success or failure of this research.

Corresponding articles that present such references more extensively and can be referenced are:

Breen, A., Giannotti, E., Flores Molina, M., & Vásquez, A. (2020). From “government to governance”? A systematic literature review of research for urban green infrastructure management in Latin America. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 2, 572360.

Gerogiannis, V. C., & Manika, S. (2022). Smart City Projects Evaluation: A Bibliometric Approach. In Building on Smart Cities Skills and Competences (pp. 155-168). Springer, Cham.

3. The conclusions and further discussion thereof are very brief. A more extensive reference to them would be useful for the article.

Author Response

1. There is no proper reference of the bibliographic sources within the text. For example, from the very beginning of the text (for example lines 31 to 35) the bibliographical sources are mentioned numerically and not the names of the authors.

Response: There references followed the instructions to Authors on how to present in-text references (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions#preparation ). The instructions on in-text references are that references must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including table captions and figure legends). And the reference numbers are to be placed in in square brackets [ ]. There is no instruction to include the name of the authors. 

 

2. The "2.5. Selection process" must be more detailed, with more emphasis on keywords, as it is a very important parameter for the overall success or failure of this research.

Response: Noted. Details on the searchers and search fields in both Scopus and Google Scholar have been added. Also, details on search and selection strategy used in both Scopus and Google Scholar have been provided under Appendix A (Supplementary Materials). The appendix shows the keywords search string that was used, the search fields and the filters that were used to narrow and select the document results.

 

3. The conclusions and further discussion thereof are very brief. A more extensive reference to them would be useful for the article.

Response: The discussion section has been increased to include the connection between the sustainability themes and the SDGs and the conclusion section has been revised.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

You have made good progress in the work and you have addressed most of my concerns. However, we remain with the issue of dimensions and themes. 

Even if you have picked dimensions and themes from different publications it has been your choice to put them together based on the choice of articles. This does not necessarily result in anything logical due to many reasons. One reason is that the words dimension and themes would have been defined differently in the referred articles.  Anodher reason is that taking parts of other people's work and putting it together to a new entity is not a guarantee that the mix will work. It would be like buying parts for different cars and then putting them together. Ther results might not be that good.  You are responsible for the logic in the dimensions and themes chosen. Unfortunately the logic for the dimensions and themes is not sound. The results in Table 6 plainly demonstrate the non viability of your approach. There is no logical common denominator for your dimensions. Most readers risk of reacting as I do, with suprise.  My opinion is that you devaluate your work by showing this. Then it gets eveny more confusing with the themes.

I realise that it is a big job in redoing the data reivew based on the logic in the SDGs. You could base your entire work on the SDGs by following through with three dimensions - 17 goals - 169 targets and some 200 plus indicators. Maybe this can be simplified. If you do this you have a solid ground for continued work. It might be feel tough in the moment, but you might be find later that quality trumps speed.

 

 

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear Authors, 

you properly addressed all of the comments, therefore I am satisfied with this version.

Kind regards

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Thanks for your extensive rework of the manuscript. 

Apart from some details I have no further comments.

1. Check language and spelling one more time

2. No point in end of title - line 4

3.  Supplementary materials (typo) line 862

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have reviewed a large academic database on sustainability assessment methods in African infrastructure projects but this does not resemble an academic discussion. 

The discussion is not particularly robust and the lack of logical coherence and strong organisation is apprently visible.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for your work. I have written my summary comments on top but left the original ones from my first reading. So, there might be some comments in double - ignore these.

You have chosen an important topic - building (infrastructure) sustainability in Africa. 

With quality in research as in quality generally we could divide it in doing the right thing and doing it in the right way. 

When it comes to doing it the right way I do not have many comments. The work is extensive with good referencing and the literature study is thorougly done. From the part of doing the work in the right way the part of conclusions could be more extensive and comparing your aim more clearly to your results. Also, finding the important areas for future research within assessing sustainable building and supporting sustainable building could be highlighted.

When it comes to doing the right thing I believe there are some problems related to a lack of a big picture view.

The challenge is to relate your study logically to the problem of sustainable building in Africa. This means clarifying what buidling sustainability is generally and in Africa specifically, since there could be significant differences.

I perceive that your study is on asssessing building sustainability which based on e.g. European building standards could be described as the proces from raw materials over building to the use of buildings and demolition. The current scope is not clear and the title does not describe the full scope of the study.

You study is for buildings - consider changing title from infrastructure to buildings. An important part of building is residential building which is not part of infrastructure which could be interpreted as roads, rails and bridges.

The introduction is very long in stating the obvious for readers of Sustainability about the general needs of change.  You could shorten the start considerably by focusing on what building sustainability is and which part of it you are dealing with. 

From global requirements as described in the 17 SDGs where yo might highlight those relevant for you like 1, 11 and 13 and salso higlight pecific targets.  Nr 1 No Poverty is very relevant in Africa. Housing is a basic human need, which means affordability most likely is the main sustainability impact seen from the user perspective. 

A definition for infrastructure sustainability would be good. Such a definition should highlight the main sustainability impacts. These might be different in developed and developing countries. Focus is in developing countries is on climate effects where as it would be on affordability in Africa. This would be an important input when deciding upon content of assessment models.

Be also explicit when you describe assessment systems and other topics. You frequently have several references but without exemplifying which makes it hard for the reader. It shoud be possible to read the paper without extensive previous knowledge and without having to check the references.

You should be clear if you use sustainability and sustainable development as synonyms or if they mean different things and in that case what the meaning is.

You refer to different assessment on green building and then note:

These processes enable construction industry practitioners to assess the impact of their decisions on sustainability objectives and align these decisions with sustainability targets

 

Measurement only makes sense if you want to do something with the results. In industrialised countries legislation or practice will require the building industry to report on  issues related to sustainability. You need to explain how these types of assessments make sense in a developing country context. 

Most buidlings in Africa is probably residential building and most of these buildings are not subjected to any assessments models but sorted out in the informal sector. So, if focus is on making African buliding sustainable it might not be by focusing on assessing systems?

The motivation for the problem studied should be clarified - why should we focus on assessment processes generally and then why specifically in Africa? How can you argue for that better assessment processes would lead to a more sustainable development? Why would assessment be the problem?

From the overall problems with building sustainability - which you should elaborate more to the African context. Note that one important reason for there not being that many studied for Africa is that African building still is small compared to global building. You can use figures for cement use to describe the part of Africa. From memory the African cement consumption ber capita is about 120 kg/person. With a population of about 1.3 billion the total cement consumption is only about 150 Mtons/year compared to the global consumption of about 4 000 Mtons. This goes a long way to explain the low number of assessments.

The objective would be sustainable building - what is this? What we cannot measure we cannot improve.

Your write: "In fact, by 2050 sub-Saharan Africa will accommodate at least 50% of the global population."  This is not correct - check data - prediction for the African population is about 2.5 billion in 2050 with a global population of about 10  in 2050 this makes 25%.

In the aim you mention part of the method when saying that you will use data from 2000-22. If you retain this you should motivate why. Better might be to leave this for the method section. 

You write: documenting Africa’s local sustainability assessment processes will shed light into the continent’s likelihood of delivering sustainable infrastructure that will support its development plans.

Questionable if you can use the level of assessments as a predictor for deliving sustainable development. 

In the conclusion your are not clearly suggesting any answer to how the study will support sustainable infrastructure

Page 7: "This systematic review looks at sustainability assessment  research for both buildings and infrastructure projects in the continent."  Rev- Sudden change of scope when including buildings? The sustainability impacts of buildings, notably residential buildings are different from infrastructure. Also, residential buildings in many African countries are not subjected to any sustainability planning processes.

Page 33 support its Agenda 63 goals is low.

Agenda 63?

Climate change is the greatest threat to Africa’s sustainable development. Yet, this review has revealed that none of local sustainability assessment processes interpret sustainability as transition to more sustainable options. 

Some comments that you might reflect on when putting your study in the context.

Buildings are responsible for close to 50% of global carbon emissions when assessed in the value chain from cradle to grave. And climate change is a serious threat to Africa. Thinking of this there is very little clarification in your study of  assessmen systems and tools what drives carbon emissions in buildings. The social impact of affordable building is not mentioned. Translating existing systems to the African context would have to start from understanding the building value chain which often is divided into building and the use of buildings. The use of buildings in the northern hemisphere is dominating when it comes to effects on climate change  because of heating. This would not be an issue in Africa where as cooling is or could become one  Until that focus is on the choise of raw materials where in urban construction cement is the driver of carbon emissions.

Referencing system should be Oxford which you have not used.

You use the word famous to refer to Brundtland commission. Avoid value based statements. Instead something like widely used