There is an urgent need to decarbonise transport- this includes the infrastructure. Railways have a key role to play in decarbonising transport because they are very energy-efficient, but the ...infrastructure and its upkeep are costly in money and carbon. Infrastructure maintenance requirements are likely to increase if the number, speed and weight of trains increase. This makes reducing the maintenance needs of the railways even more urgent. Traditionally, ballast has been considered to be life-expired after 10-50 tamps - typically about 30 years of service on moderate to busy lines. Overall maintenance needs could be reduced by reducing the need to maintain and then to replace ballast. This can be achieved by better understanding the performance of used ballast - cleaned and recovered. This thesis presents quantitative research into the relative shape properties of fresh and used ballast and relates these quantitative measures of shape to tested performance. Methods of evaluating surface roughness for railway ballast are proposed. Shape characterisation showed no significant difference in form between fresh and used ballast, a slight reduction in angularity in used ballast, and a significant reduction in roughness in used ballast. Scaled used ballast was synthesised for triaxial shear testing in the laboratory by abrading scaled fresh ballast in the Micro-Deval apparatus to a target shape equal to that of the used ballast. Effects of surface roughness and grain attrition due to loading on frictional properties of ballast were also investigated. Fresh and used ballast showed similar contact frictional properties. The study found that although the roughness of used ballast was smaller than that of fresh, both were similar in shape and showed similar strength properties. Ballast developed a stable structure over a few hundred thousand loading cycles. The resilient modulus increased by up to 60% with an increase in load cycles until about 200000 cycles; after this point, there was no significant increment. Cyclic loading improved the ballast strength by up to 15%. The study found that life-expired ballast of granitic origin could be reused.
Investment in infrastructure is essential for promoting economic growth, and while countries in Asia have enjoyed higher rates of gross domestic product growth in recent years, the region remains ...severely deficient in the scale and quality of sustainable infrastructure. Moreover, population growth and climate change continue to put increasing pressure on the need for strategic and farsighted development, calling for policy makers to reevaluate infrastructure governance to ensure sustainable economic growth. Currently, in developing Asia, most investment in infrastructure comes from the public sector. However, with growing fiscal deficits and other budgetary constraints, it is essential to develop alternative sources of investment for infrastructure projects. This presents opportunities to tap into the private sector, which can play an instrumental role in minimizing the funding gap through the development of stronger, more transparent public–private partnerships (PPPs) and incentivizing sustainable infrastructure investment. This book provides a scholarly discussion on the importance of PPPs and approaches to unlock private participation in infrastructure investment based on lessons from across Asia. Among the proposed schemes are government tax incentives, development-based land value capture strategy under PPP land pooling, Viability Gap Funds, Project Development Facilities, and other guarantees. The book aims to assess the impacts and future of sustainable infrastructure investments and examines the role of governments in mobilizing financial resources and new models for unlocking private investment in sustainable infrastructure. This book consists of fifteen original chapters on the experiences of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) and a few other cases for promoting private investment in sustainable infrastructure. The fact that not much has been published previously on this theme makes this book a welcome and timely addition to the much needed knowledge on this subject. ‘The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylor fran cis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- Non- Commercial- No Derivatives 4.0 license.’
Approaches for evaluating the infrastructure subjects of the municipal knowledge market Kremlyova, N.A.; Shichkov, A.N.; Polowinckina, V.D.
Naučno-tehničeskie vedomosti SPbGPU. Èkonomičeskie nauki/Naučno-tehničeskie vedomosti Sankt-Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo politehničeskogo universiteta. Èkonomičeskie nauki,
9/2016, Letnik:
246, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Relevance of the chosen subject of research is caused by the fact that the development of innovative market economy requires a more flexible reaction of the education system and its mobility. ...Combining the training process with the operating activities of a production enterprise is necessary, and the subjects of the infrastructure of the regional knowledge market are therefore required to complement the state system of bachelor training by personnel training aimed at specific jobs at the production enterprises of the region. The purpose of the study is in developing an approach for evaluating the competences of university graduates on the regional knowledge market, and developing instruments of innovative management providing profitability and financial independence of public educational institutions on this basis. In accordance with the purpose of the study, the following tasks are solved: analysis of the performance of the Vologda State University and similar institutions by the method of operating cycle, development of the innovative project helping to achieve the optimal criteria of the operating cycle, efficiency evaluation of the "Innovations" bachelor training program. The performance parameters of the universities were analyzed by the method of operating cycle. We have revealed the need to develop an innovative project aimed at achieving the optimal criteria of the operating cycle. We have offered an approach for organizing educational activities as a continuous process of developing innovative projects. We have paid special attention to investors that are the entities of the engineering business and the subjects of the regional knowledge market. It is proposed to use a monetary equivalent of the cost of gained knowledge as the economic result from investing into educational programs. As the performance of professionals depends on the level of their competence and the amount of gained knowledge, a conclusion can be drawn on the correlation between the size of the compensation and the knowledge gained by a graduate during the training process. The performed evaluation has shown that on average, the cost of knowledge of the VoSU graduates is estimated by employers at 15 322 rub., or 2.5 minimum wage rates per month. In 4 years the return from the knowledge constitutes 735 456 rub., which is 2.26 times more than the investments (costs) for obtaining this knowledge. A possible application of the study is using its results for increasing the profitability and financial independence of higher education institutions.
The circumstances under which different ecosystem service benefits can be realized differ. The benefits tend to be coproduced and to be enabled by multiple interacting social, ecological, and ...technological factors, which is particularly evident in cities. As many cities are undergoing rapid change, these factors need to be better understood and accounted for, especially for those most in need of benefits. We propose a framework of three systemic filters that affect the flow of ecosystem service benefits: the interactions among green, blue, and built infrastructures; the regulatory power and governance of institutions; and people’s individual and shared perceptions and values. We argue that more fully connecting green and blue infrastructure to its urban systems context and highlighting dynamic interactions among the three filters are key to understanding how and why ecosystem services have variable distribution, continuing inequities in who benefits, and the long-term resilience of the flows of benefits.
There has been a concentrated effort by European countries to increase the share of electric vehicles (EVs) and an important factor in the rollout of the associated infrastructure is an understanding ...of the charging behaviours of existing EV users in terms of location of charging, the quantity of energy they require, charge duration, and their preferred mode of charging. Data were available on the usage of charging infrastructure for the entire island of Ireland since the rollout of infrastructure began. This study provides an extensive analysis of this charge event data for public charging infrastructure, including data from fast charging infrastructure, and additionally a limited quantity of household data. For the household data available, it was found that EV users prefer to carry out the majority of their charging at home in the evening during the period of highest demand on the electrical grid indicating that incentivisation may be required to shift charging away from this peak grid demand period. Car park locations were the most popular location for public charging amongst EV users, and fast chargers recorded the highest usage frequencies, indicating that public fast charging infrastructure is most likely to become commercially viable in the short- to medium-term.
•Electric vehicle users prefer to charge at home in the evening at peak demand times.•Incentivisation will be necessary to encourage home charging at other times.•Fast charging most likely to become commercially viable in short to medium term.•Priority should be given to strategic network location of fast chargers.•Of public charge point locations, car park locations were favoured by EV users.
Dubai Amplified Ramos, Stephen J.
2010, 20160429, 2012, 2016-05-06, 2010-12-01
eBook
A detailed examination of the increasingly ambitious developments and infrastructure programmes realized in Dubai since the 1970s. This book provides an invaluable understanding of Dubai urbanism, ...but by highlighting the cycle of typological borrowing, prototypical replication, and scalar amplification. It also argues that the definition of 'infrastructure' in this type of territorial development should be expanded into a set of objects, networks and services that cities can replicate and amplify.
•We review the literatures on the six urban critical infrastructure networks (CINs).•For the six CINs, the resilience definitions, hazard categories, methodologies, and enhanced measures are ...summarized in detail.•The research challenges and future directions are presented.
With the rise of the resilience concept, scholars and practitioners have paid increasing attention to resilient city, which has become a new means of coping with hazards. As the cornerstone of modern cities, urban critical infrastructure networks (CINs) are prerequisites for resilient cities due to the huge economic losses and social impacts caused by their incapacities. In recent years, researches on the resilience of CINs have considerably increased, resulting in various resilience definitions, approaches, and enhanced strategies. This work reviews literature on six CINs, namely, water, drainage, gas, transportation, electric, and communication networks. The resilience definitions, hazard categories, methodologies, and enhanced measures for each CIN are analyzed in detail. Research challenges and future directions are also presented.
Abstract
Infrastructure is often thought of in big material terms: dams, buildings, roads, and so on. This study, instead, draws on literatures in anthropology and the social sciences to analyse ...infrastructures in relation to society and environment, and so cast current conceptions of infrastructure in a new light. Situating the analysis in context of President Biden’s recent infrastructure bill, the paper expands what is meant by and included in discussions of infrastructure. The study examines what it means for different kinds of material infrastructures to function (and for whom) or not, and considers how the immaterial infrastructure of human relations are manifested in, for example, labour, as well as how infrastructures may create intended or unintended consequences in enabling or disabling social processes. Further, in this study, we examine concepts embedded in thinking about infrastructure such as often presumed distinctions between the technical and the social, nature and culture, the human and the non-human, and the urban and the rural, and how all of these are actually implicated in thinking about infrastructure. Our analysis, thus, draws from a growing body of work on infrastructure in anthropology and the social sciences, enriches it with ethnographic insights from our own field research, and so extends what it means to study ‘infrastructures’ in the 21st century.
Green infrastructure (GI) and ecosystem services (ES) are promoted as concepts that have potential to improve environmental planning in urban areas based on a more holistic understanding of the ...complex interrelations and dynamics of social–ecological systems. However, the scientific discourses around both concepts still lack application-oriented frameworks that consider such a holistic perspective and are suitable to mainstream GI and ES in planning practice. This literature review explores how multifunctionality as one important principle of GI planning can be operationalized by approaches developed and tested in ES research. Specifically, approaches developed in ES research can help to assess the integrity of GI networks, balance ES supply and demand, and consider trade-offs. A conceptual framework for the assessment of multifunctionality from a social–ecological perspective is proposed that can inform the design of planning processes and support stronger exchange between GI and ES research.
Green Infrastructure (GI) practices have been identified as a sustainable method of managing stormwater over the years. Due to the increasing popularity of GI as an integrated urban water management ...strategy, most of the current catchment modeling tools incorporate these practices, as built-in modules. GI practices are also viewed as economically viable methods of stormwater management when compared to conventional approaches. Therefore, cost-benefit analysis or economics of GI are also emerging as obligatory components of modeling tools. Since these tools are regularly upgraded with latest advancements in the field, an assessment of tools for modeling stormwater management and economic aspects of GI practices is vital to developing them into more sophisticated tools. This review has undergone a three-phase process starting with 20 identified modeling tools available in the literature followed by a detailed review of a selection of ten most recent and popular modeling tools, based on their accessibility. The last phase of the review process is a comparison of the ten modeling tools along with their different attributes. The major aim of this review is to provide readers with the fundamental knowledge of different modeling tools currently available in the field, which will assist them with screening for a model, according to their requirements from the number of tools available. A secondary aim is to provide future research directions on developing more comprehensive tools for GI modeling, and recommendations have been presented.
PDF
