How circular design can contribute to social sustainability and legacy of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™? The case of innovative shipping container stadium

The circular economy proposes a paradigm shift from the ‘take-make-waste’ type of economic system and aims to foster innovation, resource efficiency, and waste prevention. Mega sporting events can be considered great opportunities to promote sustainable cities and communities and leave a lasting positive legacy after the post-game stage. Qatar will organize the upcoming FIFA World Cup in 2022 and Ras Abu Aboud (RAA) is designed as a fully reusable and modular shipping container stadium, which will be dismantled, relocated, and reused after the tournament. This study aims to present the first comprehensive analysis on the social sustainability and legacy aspects of a circular and sharing economy application for the FIFA World Cup organization. The research analyzes the entire life cycle phases of the RAA stadium including the raw material production, construction, operations, and end-of-life. The Ecoinvent v.3.7.1 is used to quantify the midpoint environmental and endpoint human health impacts. For its operation phase assessment, two operation scenarios are comparatively analyzed: one-year temporary operation (Scenario 1) and 50 years of permanent operation (Scenario 2). Later, a simulation-based sensitivity analysis is conducted. Finally, we discussed how circular and modular design thinking can bring long-lasting legacy post-event, through reuse and recycling from a socio-economic perspective. An important finding shows that circular design under Scenario 1 can save up to 60% of human health impacts and significantly reduce the material footprint and dependence on imported construction materials. This research will enhance future awareness for sustainability benefits of circular and sharing economy application adopted by mega sporting events concerning the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and FIFA's post-game legacy and sustainability strategies

Towards sustainable FIFA world cup 2022: a cradle-to-cradle social life cycle impact assessment for reusable container stadium in the state of Qatar

Restorative circular economy practices in green stadium construction act as a shrewd economic move in reaching net-zero carbon emission goals for Qatar, the 2022 FIFA World Cup host. This research intends to conduct the first social life cycle impact assessment for Ras Abu Aboud stadium, a reusable shipping container stadium in Qatar, that will be the host to 40,000 spectators from around the world, which will then be dismantled after the world cup tournament. In this regard, this research effectively utilized the Ecoinvent version 3.7.1 and real construction data of Ras Abu Aboud stadium to quantify the human health impacts by applying the ReCiPe 2008 End point impact model under the Egalitarian perspective. The findings of this research presented the contributions of various life cycle phases such as the production of materials and resources, construction, operations, and end-of-life management. The results revealed that the majority of social impacts came from the production phase. The damage to human health from the construction and the operation phases were found to be significantly lower than that of the production phase by 85% and 98.6%. The end-of life management under a circular economy strategy was assessed to reveal the benefits of circular economy applications in sustainable construction from a pessimistic, and optimistic approach. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted that identified human toxicity as the most sensitive impact category across the production and construction phase of the life cycle. While, climate change was the most sensitive among all the other impact groups in the operations phase. Later, the legacy aspect of reusable stadium design and construction fostered by Qatar's FIFA world cup organizing committee is presented and its potential benefits for the society are discussed. This research thus promotes professional growth in the area of sustainable building practices, supporting United Nations "Urban Development program" to promote environmental related research in Qatar and future FIFA host countries