Evaluation Of Infrastructure Projects Research Articles

The influencing factors developing PDCA model to achieve sustainability of area-based infrastructure project evaluation (AIPE)

The influencing factors developing PDCA model to achieve sustainability of area-based infrastructure project evaluation (AIPE)

Identify social-economic factors used in cost-benefit analysis in transport infrastructure projects

Transport infrastructure development plays a vital role in economic growth, thus evaluating and selecting “right” project investment is considered a key for local government. Generally, practitioners and scholars use the tools and techniques of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) for project evaluation but identifying cost-benefit factors considered social-economic aspects is a challenge for decision-makers. Thus, our research attempts to address this issue by reviewing the history of CBA development in the transport infrastructure domain from 1844 to 2022. Following the data published in more than one hundred studies, the authors provided a holistic picture of CBA development and a catalog of social-economic CBA used for transport infrastructure project evaluation.

A methodology to assess and select transport infrastructure development projects based on the fuzzy logic approach

Subject. This article analyzes the totality of economic relations and problems within the framework of the spatial development of settlements and subjects of the Russian Federation. Objectives. The article aims to develop a multi-criteria approach to the assessment and selection of transport infrastructure development projects, taking into account the interests of a wide range of subjects, quantitative and qualitative criteria based on the fuzzy logic approach. Methods. For the study, we used the methods of economic analysis, synthesis, comparison, and n-dimensional Euclidean distance. Results. The article reveals internal and external, direct and indirect effects and offers a classification of criteria for assessing infrastructure projects, taking into account the socio-economic and environmental context. The article also presents a methodology for multi-criteria assessment and selection of transport infrastructure development projects, including the calculation of an integral indicator, the consideration of quantitative and qualitative criteria based on the apparatus of fuzzy sets, which allows ranking them and determining the most priority project for implementation. Relevance. The proposed methodological approach to the evaluation of infrastructure projects can be used by executive authorities as a tool to support management decision-making in the framework of a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of national and regional transport projects.

Investments in research infrastructure on the project level: Problems, methods and mechanisms

Evaluation of infrastructure projects usually involves the separate application of financial or economic analysis to assess return on investment. In this paper we have developed a modified approach that includes additional public effects and their distribution between project participants in the financial and economic model of the research infrastructure project. Evaluation methods are based on the transition from financial to economic efficiency by adjusting cash flows and including indirect effects (impact of technological spillovers), externalities (knowledge spillovers and ecological effects) and tax effects. Policy and practical implications are closely examined with a focus on the distributional effects for the Core Facility Project of the Catalyst Center in Novosibirsk Academic Town. The results show that a significant excess of economic returns compared to financial returns is determined mainly by the indirect benefits of private participants who use the results of the project, but are not direct participants in this project. The main impact on the financial efficiency arises at the investment stage through direct support measures, complemented by private funding. Indirect support measures only work successfully during the operational stage. Stimulation of the investments in research infrastructure through government support essentially depends on the choice of a certain combination of government support instruments and project financing.

An integrated rough group multicriteria decision-making model for the ex-ante prioritization of infrastructure projects: The Serbian Railways case

Railway transportation is the backbone of the economy significantly influences mobility and life quality in many developed and developing countries. Railway infrastructure investment problems are inherently complex and involve multiple and often conflicting criteria in an uncertain socio-economic environment. This study presents an integrated rough group FUll COnsistency Method (FUCOM) and Multi-Atributive Ideal-Real Comparative Analysis (MAIRCA) method for railway infrastructure project evaluation and prioritization. The FUCOM method evaluates the selection criteria through a simple algorithm, and the MAIRCA method prioritizes alternative projects through structured and systematic mathematical computations. Sensitivity analysis measures the impact of the criteria weights on the final results. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient assesses the effect of criteria weight variations on alternative rankings' stability. This study's main contribution is developing and implementing a comprehensive and robust framework for ex-ante evaluation and prioritization of railway infrastructure projects. A case study in Serbian Railways demonstrates the proposed integrated framework's applicability and efficacy in evaluating the railway infrastructure projects for Serbian Railways.

Ex post evaluation of developmental interventions in large scale infrastructure projects: The case of Vistonida rural area

The structural development interventions carried out by the European Union (EU) aim to accelerate the real convergence of 28 Member States, mainly those lagging behind interventions. Most of these contribute to better environmental protection, better life condition for farmers and flood protection. Evaluation of infrastructure projects contributing to spatial growth in ex-ante, ongoing, and ex-post basis is an essential activity to answer several issues raised during the growth mentioned above process. This paper aims to evaluate on ex-post basis integrated developmental interventions-large scale infrastructure projects in rural areas, using a combined method based on Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (SCBA), sustainable and rural growth indicators coming from official organizations along with the n-Dimensional (nD) modelling. The studied developmental interventions refer to Vistonida's rural area, an area to which large-scale infrastructure financed and carried out by the Greek state. They contributed to the modernization and adaptation of the agriculture sector, improving its qualitative and quantitative performance. The needed data derived from the Hellenic National Statistical Services, Ministry of Agriculture, Greek Payment Authority of Common Agricultural Policy (C.A.P.) and concern a period of forty years and they are referred to Land redistribution, irrigation land, crops structure. According to this study, the large-scale agriculture infrastructure contributes significantly to the improvement of the growth rates of a rural spatial productive system as a whole. The application of the combined method was simple, easily understood by policymakers, adequately reliable, and precise.

Partial information and complex development decisions: Illustrations from infrastructure projects

This study assesses the theoretical and practical limitations of evaluations of infrastructure projects. Existing tools used in such evaluations typically exhibit two main limitations. Firstly, they tend to accommodate only two dimensions at once and rely on extensive use of averages for additional dimensions. Secondly, they mostly produce a narrow (project exclusive) or information that is too general, thereby precluding both broader and more detailed interpretations at once.Development decisions so informed are consequently based on partial information. Too often this has produced unsatisfactory outcomes for some stakeholders along with increased risks and heightened uncertainties. This is particularly the case for infrastructure projects.This paper proposes an alternative approach to development decision-making called ‘complex stakeholder perception mapping’ (CSPM). CSPM's evaluations inclusively involve a spectrum of insights and perception maps which offer flexibility, combined with complex perceptions of multiple stakeholders on multiple aspects of development.Applicability of CSPM is demonstrated using four perceptual dimensions in infrastructure development evaluation. Different perception combinations and individual group perceptions generate patterns which indicate aspects and groups that need attention. This approach generates rigorous interpretations of information at both the micro and macro level of the project environment, thereby supporting well-informed strategic decision making to advance project outcomes.

Group decision making process for early stage evaluations of infrastructure projects using extended VIKOR method under fuzzy environment

PurposeThis paper considers the evaluations of project alternatives at the early stages of infrastructure project developments. Although it is expected to make important decisions at project early stages, it is rarely possible to obtain reliable data for exact evaluations. To deal with low quality data and the existence of uncertainties, this paper extends the evaluation problem to the fuzzy environment.MethodsWe propose group decision making process for early stage evaluations of infrastructure projects. The evaluation approach utilizes combination weighting and compromise ranking. We integrate subjective and objective weighting methods to specify criteria weights. Afterwards, we use the VIKOR method to rank alternatives in the presence of conflicting criteria.ResultsAs a case study, we illustrate the evaluation problem within a railway line reconstruction project. Specifically, the proposed approach is efficiently applied to evaluate and rank several route alternatives considered within the reconstruction project of the regional line Pančevo – Vršac at Serbian railway network.ConclusionsThe provided example illustrates the applicability of the proposed approach to deal with the evaluations at the early stage of the railway line reconstruction. The existence of uncertainties at early stages of project developments is common, so the proposed method is also applicable for other linear infrastructure in transport sector.

Time-declining risk-adjusted social discount rates for transport infrastructure planning

This paper proposes a social discount rate for transport infrastructure project evaluation in Germany that accounts for production efficiency, systematic traffic demand risk, as well as increasing uncertainty in the long-run. The systematic risk in infrastructure planning is measured by the sensitivity of transport volume towards GDP using cointegration analysis. In contrast to the only existing application of this model in transport economics, in this paper the systematic risk for freight transport projects is substantially higher than for passenger transport projects. Due to different systematic risk patterns, the discount rates for freight and passenger transport projects should differ as well, with the former being equal to approximately 3.5% and declining to 2.7% after 50 years, and the latter ranging between 2.0% and the risk-free rate of 1.3%. This paper focuses especially on the econometric challenges of the CAPM-like estimation of systematic risk in public transport infrastructure project assessment and is at the same time the first application to German data.

Using Framing Effects to Inform More Sustainable Infrastructure Design Decisions

AbstractDecision aids, ranging from rating systems to design software to regulatory standards, guide the design and evaluation of infrastructure projects. To present the information in these decision aids, there must first be some options such as, attributes are or are not presented, and, just as in other domains, these factors are likely to influence decisions in infrastructure development. The authors of this paper seek to better understand how choice structures influence engineering decisions. Prospect theory, which is well established in the behavioral sciences, asserts that people tend to think of possible outcomes relative to their starting point, not the resulting end point. For instance, framing a decision outcome as a loss in value (rather than a gain) can reduce the decision makers’ acceptance of risk and, in turn, lead to more conservative outcomes. To measure framing effects in engineering decisions, this paper uses the Envision rating system for sustainable infrastructure, which aims to help ...

Green Roads

Sustainability rating systems are gaining more and more importance for public authorities, contractors and clients. Established approaches for sustainability evaluation of infrastructure projects, as ENVISION, CEEQUAL or the IS-Rating System, offer numerous diferent criteria in order to evaluate environmental, economic and social performance. Due to a missing international standardisation, rating systems vary in structure, applicability and range of criteria. By using the example of assessing highway projects, evaluation limits caused by general criteria or neglecting economic, technical and process-related aspects become obvious. Hence, existing rating systems have to be extended in order to ensure a holistic sustainability assessment.

Die ökonomische Bewertung kleiner Reisezeiteinsparungen / The Economic Valuation of Small Travel Time Savings

Summary Travel time savings are usually the most important utility component in transport infrastructure project evaluation. One of the controversial issues in research on the valuation of travel time savings is the assessment of small time savings. This article goes into this matter with specific focus on indifference thresholds in discrete choice models. Our research shows, if such thresholds exist, valuation of time savings should be differentiated according to the size of the time saving. In particular, small time savings should be valued at a lower rate than large ones. Consequences and criticism regarding this procedure are discussed. We find similarities to the currently applied evaluation methodology in the German Federal Infrastructure Plan.

Study of the Rural Infrastructure Project Evaluation Index System Based on Sustainable Development

Under field research in Shaanxi province, the rural infrastructure project evaluation index system based on sustainable development is proposed to promote the sustainability of the project during decision and regulate the construction of rural infrastructure. Corresponding to the structure entropy weight method defining the index weight, the system consists of 9 evaluation factors and 46 evaluation indexes from economic, social, environmental and technical is built up, and taking Shannan district and Guanzhong district in Shaanxi province as examples to do empirical analysis. The result exhibits the local development rational, which proves the validity of rural infrastructure project evaluation index system based on sustainable development.

Ventanas de oportunidad y coaliciones de política pública: el caso del proyecto para un nuevo aeropuerto en la ciudad de México desde una perspectiva histórica

<p>El presente trabajo ofrece una revisión histórica de las decisiones políticas y de política pública alrededor del proyecto para un nuevo aeropuerto en la Ciudad de México. Para ello se auxilia de dos modelos conceptuales dentro del área de políticas públicas: el modelo de vertientes múltiples de John Kingdon (1984) y el modelo de las coaliciones de política de Sabatier y Jenkins-Smith (1993; 1999). En este sentido, las tres principales aportaciones son: 1) la aplicación de estos modelos al área de grandes proyectos de infraestructura en un país latinoamericano; 2) la documentación del caso de estudio desde el punto de vista del proceso de políticas públicas (otros autores ya han documentado el movimiento social en Atenco y Texcoco en 2001 y 2002); y 3) el análisis de una arena de competencia política, no electoral, así como las implicaciones para la evaluación de proyectos de infraestructura.</p>

The Economics of Infrastructure Investment: Beyond Simple Cost Benefit Analysis

This non-technical ‘think-piece’ examines aspects of infrastructure project evaluation, concentrating on circumstances that may render a standard cost benefit analysis (CBA) inappropriate. It is designed to make infrastructure investors and planners think deeply about their assumptions and to broaden the range of issues that are taken into account. Issues considered include: the role of CBA; network effects (increasing returns to scale) and the endogeneity of resources within an economy; the valuation of productive versus consumptive benefits; the value of traded versus non-traded sector production; the role and choice of the discount rate; and the importance of considering option values when making infrastructure investment and disinvestment decisions.

Ex-Ante and Ex-Post Evaluation of Infrastructure Projects: From a Perspective of Optimal Contract

Ex-Ante and Ex-Post Evaluation of Infrastructure Projects: From a Perspective of Optimal Contract

Effectiveness of Evaluation of Development Assistance for Infrastructure Projects in Asian Countries

The paper focuses on the effectiveness of evaluation of infrastructure projects implemented in Asia. It is intended to highlight major deficiencies found in the evaluation function, which undermines the understanding of the effectiveness of development assistance. It was found that strategic level information needs coupled with exogenous factors related to project performance was not adequately captured by the present evaluation systems. It is recommended that donor agencies have to go beyond project evaluations to take into account the overall pattern of development in recipient countries. Donor agencies should understand the recipient country conditions through evaluations, rather than concentrating mainly on the efficiency and effectiveness of the aid delivery system.