Small Town Water Supply Infrastructure Costs

The growth in urban populations has facilitated an increase in demand for urban water supply. This report examines the costs of construction for urban water supply in small/medium towns (population 10 000 to 40 000) in Africa, including costs per capita for water supply systems and unit costs of key water supply infrastructure items. The literature reviewed identifies three major factors influencing the costs of small town water systems: population density, types of technology and contract packaging. The capital costs of water supply infrastructure vary widely both on a per-capita basis for water supply systems and on a per-unit basis for specific infrastructure items. Examples of capital expenditure per capita for some water supply systems were found to vary by as much as 19-fold within a single country (for mechanised boreholes in Ghana), and unit costs of water supply system components varied by more than 4-fold (for boreholes with hand pumps in Ghana)

A risk based approach for trading renewable electricity

Growing energy demand and climate change due to increasing CO2 emissions are two major global issues. The development of Supergrids, which involves connecting national energy supply grids together via interconnections, has been proposed as a measure to overcome these challenges. Supergrids arguably aid the implementation of other measures such as managing demand and development of renewable sources of energy, whilst it has its own benefits, perhaps, the most important one being its economic efficiency in comparison with generating electricity. A key challenge for developing Supergrids is finding the most suitable countries with which to make an interconnection. This doctoral research aims to develop a risk-based theoretical framework for selecting the most appropriate country (ies) with which to make grid interconnections and trade renewable electricity. Quantitative risk analysis technique is used to compare candidate countries by taking into the account the various risks associated with the construction and maintenance of interconnections. The risks include: social, technical, economic, environment and political aspects. The framework is demonstrated using the UK as a case study

Rates of Return for Railway Infrastructure Investments in Africa

Internal Rate of Return (IRR), also known as Economic Internal Rate of Return (EIRR), is one of the economic appraisal methods for infrastructure projects which is widely used in Africa to indicate that the calculation includes externalities and to distinguish it from the financial internal rate of return (FIRR) which considers only costs and returns directly associated with the project. IRR is considered by the European Commission and by the World Bank for justification of capital investments, where values over 12% are normally accepted for developing countries (ECORYS, 2016; The Republic of Liberia, 2012). This report compares IRR values found for railway projects in Africa. IRRs estimated for rehabilitation projects averaged 12.2%, and 16.3% for new construction. All of the IRR estimates that the review found were pre-construction estimates. All projects included various externalities in their calculations (most often air pollution and road accidents), but none of them estimated impacts on GDP. IRR is well-established as a way of comparing independent projects, but the approach has some weaknesses. IRR may not always be calculated consistently: different projects may take different factors into account when calculating IRR, may assign different values to factors, or may use different approaches to dealing with externalities. Other economic indicators such as Net Present Value (NPV) may also be considered for project appraisal, but there is ongoing debate about which one of them should be preferred, as illustrated for instance by Tang and John Tang (2003). An unbiased approach was taken to identify a sufficient number of relevant studies. Given sufficient resources, such an approach would ideally seek to identify all relevant literature. However, because of the resource constraints of this review study, consideration was given to locating a sample of studies most pertinent to addressing the research question. This was achieved by carrying out a keyword search of titles and abstracts of studies via Internet search engines and accessing academic journal databases and the websites of specific organisations

Lessons from Road Safety Research and Policy Engagement in Pakistan, Nepal, Tanzania

DFID invests in research on transport infrastructure to promote knowledge on cross-cutting issues, such as road safety, and to influence standards and practices across the sector. This rapid desk based study provides lessons from DFID funded road safety research and policy engagement in Pakistan, Nepal and Tanzania. To this end, this report considers recent projects/studies published post-2005 only. DFID also has a number of initiatives linked to developing the capacity building of national governments to make greater use of research findings in road safety. For example, the Global Road Safety Facility has developed new standards and approaches to road safety issues, influencing both the World Bank (which in 2015 made road safety a mandatory component of all road projects) and partner country governments. Furthermore, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) has reported positive impacts on road safety standards and practices through DFID investments in road safety projects. The Research for Community Access Partnership (RECAP) is developing low-cost solutions for rural roads, and we found evidence of uptake of new road standards by national governments. Broadly the reports examined showed that all DFID funded projects have been generally successful in improving road safety, while providing recommendations and identifying associated challenges in Pakistan, Nepal and Tanzania

Estimating the Benefits of Joint Occupation for Street Works

The UK’s local road infrastructure is subject to frequent openings to maintain and invest in buried infrastructure. Opening a road reduces its structural integrity, necessitates the implementation of traffic management and causes environmental pollution. These in turn can result in increased road use costs, adversely affect local business, cause social disbenefit, reduce road asset value and necessitate unplanned maintenance. There are therefore benefits to be gained from coordinating the openings of the highway in similar locations. Shared highway openings, however, are often not realised in practice for a number of reasons, including the lack of public accountability among infrastructure providers and the absence of appreciation for quantifying the benefits of joint occupation. To address this, this paper describes a novel rigorous procedure, based on multicriteria analysis, developed for Staffordshire County Council that evaluates the primary monetised and non-monetised economic, social, political and environmental benefits and costs associated with joint occupation and enables potential joint occupation schemes to be ranked. The use of the procedure is demonstrated by two joint occupation schemes in a rural and an urban area of Staffordshire. The work highlights the advantages of encouraging collaborative working among service providers to reduce costs and to increase asset life. </jats:p

A vulnerability-based approach to human-mobility reduction for countering COVID-19 transmission in London while considering local air quality

An ecologic analysis was conducted to explore the correlation between air pollution, and COVID-19 cases and fatality rates in London. The analysis demonstrated a strong correlation (R2>0.7) between increment in air pollution and an increase in the risk of COVID-19 transmission within London boroughs. Particularly, strong correlations (R2>0.72) between the risk of COVID-19 fatality and NO2 and PM2.5 pollution concentrations were also found. Although this study assumed the same level of air pollution across a particular London borough, it demonstrates the possibility to employ air pollution as an indicator to rapidly identify the vulnerable regions within a city. Such an approach can inform the decisions to suspend or reduce the operation of different public transport modes within a city. The methodology and learnings from the study can thus aid public transport to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak by adopting different levels of human-mobility reduction strategies based on the vulnerability of a given region

Supergrid:projecting interconnection capacities for the UK

Interconnected electricity networks, supergrids, are being considered in Europe as a way to help tackle two current global challenges – rapidly increasing energy demands and rising carbon dioxide emissions. As with any new approach, there is a range of risks associated with developing interconnections, not least the availability of surplus electricity for exportation between various candidate countries. While the future is never certain, the process of generating a range of possible capacities for these interconnections should be considered as a necessary precursor for mitigating risks within decision-making processes. In facilitating this objective, this paper proposes a step-wise methodological framework for assessing the probabilities of achieving surplus capacity provision within a UK pan-European supergrid. This includes application of a newly developed tool for proposing a range of energy supply/demand scenarios in conjunction with the @Risk assessment tool. Through example scenarios it is shown how P80 (80th percentile) interconnection capacities for 2030 can be assessed. The results suggest that, of the nine candidate countries, Germany could provide the greatest (10ṡ97 GW) surplus capacity with an 80% chance. It is concluded that, with further stakeholder engagement, the developed framework will provide a deeper understanding of the key fundamental risks associated with interconnections as well as mitigation measures. </jats:p

Numerically simulating the interconnected nature of the road-soil-pipe infrastructure

Successful operation of infrastructure, such as the road, rail, and utility networks, are fundamental to modern living, and failure of these can have significant consequences. Yet they are likely, when in proximity, to interact, and failure of one can cause cascade failure of others. Equally, all are supported by the ground, which can also experience changes in properties as the infrastructure deteriorates. Research into the interconnected nature of these infrastructure is not new, but much focuses on the structural behaviour of the human-made components (road structures, pipes, etc). This paper presents a numerical model developed to systematically evaluate the impacts of simulated pipe leakage on the surrounding ground and pavement layer above. The model outputs indicate that the road surface experiences increased strains due to weakening ground conditions around the leaking pipe and these are exacerbated by asymmetrical traffic loading. Findings indicate that leakage can cause differential settlements (observed both at the surface and pipe levels), which could cause localised deterioration of the pavement material (due to tensile cracking, etc.) precipitating surface anomalies like cracks or potholes. This suggests that understanding the root-cause of road surface deterioration is critical to efficient long-term management of road networks so that the symptoms are not remediated whilst the root-cause remains. This research provides a crucial step towards enhancing predictive maintenance and calls for further investigation into the long-term geotechnical impacts of leakage, to develop robust repair and maintenance frameworks that address underlying causes of road surface anomalies

Evidence of the Impact of Rural Road Investment on Poverty Reduction and Economic Development

This report provides a rapid review of some of the recently published evidence of the impact of such investment. This rapid evidence based assessment builds on the more thorough systematic review conducted by Hine et al. (2016) which found that published studies in general demonstrated a strong link between good access and indicators of socio- economic benefit. The findings of this rapid review confirm the earlier findings by Hine et al. (2016) and demonstrate positive impacts associated with increased income, poverty reduction, employment, agricultural output and sales, education, health, traffic volumes, transport services, transport costs and general economic indicators. In a number of the recent studies it was found that rural road investment encouraged structural transformations of villages by facilitating non-farm employment and enabling migration to urban areas. However, this did not necessarily translate into substantial increases in incomes. With increased interest in climate change a small but growing body of literature outlines the potential negative impacts of roads on forest cover and biodiversity, although it depends on the local context and type of road