Public involvement in the design and implementation of infrastructure projects

Infrastructure projects, although associated with public health and well-being, are often faced with opposition movements during their design and implementation. In this work, public involvement is investigated as means for comprehending the reasons behind any public opposition during the implementation of civil infrastructure works. More specifically, three courses of actions are proposed in order to initiate public engagement in the design process of infrastructure projects, i.e., (i) the collaboration with municipalities, institutes and universities for collection of data and previous studies in the area, (ii) the indirect communication with the public through online questionnaires, and (iii) the direct communication with the public during field works and by loose-format interviews regarding their experiences. After statistically evaluating the information acquired by the input data, it is concluded that the combination of the above actions can enhance the engineers’ knowledge at the area of interest, and thus, may result in a more efficient design of civil works, but also, in the public engagement during and after their implementation.