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Constructing new roads and upgrading existing roads are two common approaches to address congestion caused by increasing traffic volumes. But they can also impact local communities if roads are built through neighborhoods or existing roads and intersections are widened and placed closer to nearby homes. In this paper, we estimate how local communities are impacted by these changes using data on housing prices near roads and roadway construction projects. We find that homes near major roads sell for less than homes further away, but that congestion-reducing road improvements only lead to small average increases in nearby home prices. Our results suggest that major roads in close proximity negatively impact housing prices by affecting neighborhood aesthetics, and this relationship is not contingent upon the level of traffic on the roads. Our results can help policymakers consider the external costs borne by local communities when conducting cost–benefit analyses of roadway expansions or improvements. • Homes near roadways face price penalty, regardless of traffic on the roadway. • Roadway construction increases home prices only slightly. • Co-located amenities likely mute effect of traffic on home prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the often-neglected economic impacts associated with the supply of hydraulic infrastructure in rural and under-serviced communities in developing countries. We rely on a rich panel dataset including 1319 Senegalese rural households collected in 2016 and 2020, during the deployment of the first phase of the Emergency Program for Community Development (PUDC). By combining propensity score matching (PSM), inverse probability weighting, difference-in-differences, and quantile regression, we find that access to piped water improves employment in the agricultural sector but has no significant impact on household expenditures. After controlling for attrition, through PSM, we find that the employment effect operates through access to a greater quantity of water and a reduction in the time women devote to water fetching chores. Moreover, when bundled with complementary infrastructure interventions such as the construction of rural roads, we find that access to water services generates an even higher impact. The quantile analysis shows that non-poor households seem to benefit more from the provided water supply infrastructure compared to poor households. Finally, when comparing the welfare effect of government-led PUDC water supply with that of community-led initiatives, our findings advocate for the widespread implementation of the former for reasons of cost-effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable operation of tunnel drainage without shaft covers in the roadway A well‐planned drainage system for the road infrastructure and its integrated engineering structures contributes decisively to the traffic safety in road construction. Simultaneously, a carefully engineered drainage system in conjunction with suitable materials and constructions reduces the maintenance costs in the long term, thus ensuring a smooth operation of the system. The ease of cleaning of the system plays a major part in reducing road blocking time related associated to maintenance or repair works. In tunnels in particular, the drainage systems regularly cause closures precisely due to maintenance and repair works. Damages occur regularly, particularly in areas of permanent overrun of inspection shafts, and repairing them leads often to time‐consuming road closures. In order to reduce the resulting costs to a minimum, the use of a modified baffle shaft at the edge of the carriageway should make it possible to operate and maintain the drainage pipe without a manhole cover in the carriageway. This article highlights the modified baffle shaft and its advantages for the operation of tunnels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of roadway planning and design practices since the early-20th century demonstrates that engineers have increasingly prioritized building and designing roads that are adapted to their surrounding context. Roadbuilding in the early-20th century focused on delivering road facilities able to operate in all weather conditions, accommodate automobiles, and facilitate personal travel and commerce. The growth in automobile ownership required engineers to work towards alleviating congestion and thus resulting in constructing sprawling infrastructure networks that connect urban and suburban areas -- sometimes at the expense of marginalized communities and neighborhood cultures. The late-1990s and early-2000s saw transportation agencies, AASHTO, and NCHRP embrace performance-based approaches to road design that are more sensitive to context. This trend continues today, with novel tools being devised to help engineers carry out a flexible, multimodal, performance-based, and context-sensitive design process built upon the context classification system introduced in A Policy of Geometric Design for Highways and Streets (7th Edition) and expanded through a series of NCHRP research documents. Using W. Broadway Avenue in Louisville, Kentucky, as a case study, this paper illustrates the application of the new context classification system and associated Transportation Expectations to road design. Making use of the latest tools and concepts, the case study shows, will improve project delivery so planners and engineers may also address issues related to public health, community and transportation equity, local cultures, and community needs when crafting design solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kenya has seen a boom in road building during the last couple of years as a result of the government's significant investments in the construction industry to upgrade infrastructure, such as road networks. Road network construction is one of the key pillars of the country long term vision 2030. However, the performance of the road projects has experienced various challenges leaving some roads uncompleted, others poorly done after huge investment of public resources. This study sought to evaluate the influence of financial resources scheduling on the performance of road construction projects in Nairobi Metropolitan, Kenya. The research was based on resource dependence theory. A descriptive design as well as the cross-sectional survey was used. The population of interest for this study consisted of 39 road construction projects being implemented by Kenya Urban Roads Authority and Kenya National Highway Authority within the Nairobi metropolitan area. A semi structured questionnaire was utilized to collect primary data. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The study results revealed projects resource scheduling had a positive and significant effect on project performance of road construction projects in Nairobi Metropolitan, Kenya. The study concludes that effective financial resource scheduling enables that organization to manage risk that may occur from changes in the project's outcome. Financial resource scheduling starts from developing the project budget which is a process for allocating administered and departmental funds necessary to build a financial foundation for producing stated project deliverables [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban highways are widely recognized to have devastating social, economic, and environmental consequences, locking in fossil energy dependence, racial and class segregation, and suburban sprawl. Today, as much of the infrastructure built during the peak of the midcentury road construction boom in the global North reaches the end of its lifespan, there is growing interest in removing highways and replacing them with parks, housing, and surface boulevards in the interest of economic development, repairing social divisions in urban space, and fostering more sustainable mobility. Based on preliminary research, this paper offers an empirically driven conceptual outline of highway removal projects in the United States and Spain. I argue that highway removal constitutes an opportunity for a "socioecological fix" for the emerging crisis of automobility, but in practice, highway removal projects may reinscribe the scalar contradictions of carbon-intensive urban-regional metabolisms. Through several empirical cases of highway removal projects, I examine three dimensions through which these contradictions can be understood: national policy changes in urban infrastructure planning and governance, material conflicts between demolition and tunneling and their implications for regional metabolisms, and local sustainable development politics and their distributional contradictions. Although the projects sketched here tend to fall short of their transformative promises, I emphasize that highway removal remains a critical arena of urban climate change politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil infrastructure systems have traditionally been designed assuming stationarity in precipitation. However, climate change is making this assumption invalid, affecting both existing infrastructure designed assuming stationarity and the design of new infrastructure. Although many studies have analyzed potential increases in precipitation due to climate change, fewer have attempted to translate these changes into the impact of stream discharge in a way that could be incorporated into infrastructure design. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the potential impact of climate change on both rainfall and peak discharge to aid in bridge and road infrastructure design. Results showed that the median increase in model-derived rainfall intensity across the selected rainfall stations in Virginia was 10%–30% for the midcentury (centered on 2045) and 10%–40% for the end of the century (centered on 2085), with the higher increase for the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) scenario compared with the RCP4.5 scenario. A regression analysis was performed to relate peak discharge to watershed size for midcentury and end-of-century periods for the study area. In terms of peak discharge, smaller watersheds (<25 km2) had a percent increase for a given return period that was independent of the watershed size. Considering both RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, for a 100-year return period, the increase was 39% and 49%, respectively, for the midcentury periods and 36% and 52%, respectively, for the end-of-century periods. For larger watersheds (>25 km2), the increase in peak discharge decreased as the watershed size increased, suggesting a dampening effect for larger watersheds in this coastal plain region of Virginia. For a watershed size of 1,700 km2 , the largest watershed included in the analysis, the percent increase in peak discharge for a 100-year return period was 14% and 39% during the midcentury, and 16% and 40% at the end of the century, for the two emission scenarios. These findings and the general methodology used in the study can aid transportation and water resources engineers in incorporating changing rainfall impacts into assessing current infrastructure and designing future infrastructure. They can also help to prioritize resources for more costly hydraulic analyses of potentially vulnerable infrastructure. The study aims to understand better how climate change will impact future precipitation and how this change in precipitation will impact peak discharge for watersheds of various sizes. Using Virginia as a study region, the median increase in precipitation intensity was found to be between 10% and 30% for the midcentury and 10%–40% for the end of the century across the state. Smaller watersheds (<25 km2) had an increase in peak discharge for a given return period that was independent of the watershed size. In comparison, larger watersheds (>25 km2) had an increase in peak discharge, but the percent increase in peak discharge decreased as the size of the watershed increased, especially for the RCP8.5 emission scenario. Regression equations were developed to provide a first approximation of peak discharge based on the watershed area, the emission scenario, and the return period to aid decision-makers in the region when including climate change impacts when assessing existing or designing new hydraulic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to improve the security, dependability, and quality of infrastructure systems, the implementation of complex transportation construction and maintenance projects is essential. Building upon a previous study that identified six crucial factors for effectively implementing new and emerging technologies in the State Department of Transportations (DOTs), this research aims to comprehensively explore six critical factors using a maturity model perspective. DOTs have shown increasing interest in adopting emerging and wireless technologies, as evident in various Federal Highway Administration Every Day Counts initiative. This study employs a mixed-methods approach, using survey responses from DOT personnel to evaluate the relative significance of technology implementation factors and subfactors. The six factors for successful technology implementation explored in this study are Organization Structure, Information Technology Infrastructure, Data Security, Information Workflow, Personnel Training, and Stakeholder Engagement. The study also evaluates the relative importance of People, Process, and Technology for each of these six factors. The paper focuses on providing detailed insights into the different criteria of each technology implementation factor and subfactor to guide agencies in successful technology deployment. Understanding these factors is critical to deploying emerging technologies successfully, which, in turn, leads to much-needed efficiency and productivity in highway construction and asset management. The findings of this study can help DOTs prioritize their technology investments and ultimately contribute to the development of a more advanced and sustainable transportation infrastructure system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, China's "Northwest Highway" was a major conduit for Soviet equipment to support the war effort against Japan. This article investigates the building and operation of the portion of this new motor route in Gansu province. While the Northwest Highway was a remarkable achievement in long-distance motorized logistics—and later became a lever for Nationalist state-building in the region—it came at a heavy cost in energy and labor and negatively impacted state–society relations. This article uncovers the multiple layers of energy inputs involved in the construction and operation of the highway, from organic human and animal power to the colossal fossil fuel demands of truck transportation. Many of these costs were imposed on civilian society in Gansu through corvée labor and requisitioning. To compound these burdens, this article argues, the Northwest Highway brought few positive spillover effects because of restrictions on civilian road use and the limitations of Gansu's wider transportation infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One essential part of transportation infrastructure is highways. The surrounding eco-environment is greatly impacted by the construction of highways. However, few studies have investigated changes in eco-environmental quality during highway construction, and the main impact areas of the construction have not been clarified. The highway from Sunit Right Banner to Huade (Inner Mongolia–Hebei border) was used as the study area. GEE was used to establish RSEI. During highway construction, Sen + M-K trend analysis, Hurst analysis, and Geodetector were employed to assess RSEI changes and driving factors. The results show the following: (1) An area of 1500 m around the highway is where the ecological impact of highway construction will be the greatest. (2) The curve of the annual mean of the RSEI from 2016 to 2021 is V-shaped. From northwest to southeast, there is an increasing trend in spatial distribution. (3) The largest environmental degradation during highway construction occurred during the first year of highway construction. (4) The factor detector results indicate that DEM, precipitation, distance from the administrative district, and FVC were the main RSEI drivers in the research region. The interaction detector's findings show that the drivers' combined influence on the RSEI was greater than that of their individual components. (5) Compared to the 2016–2021 trend, the proportion of future degraded areas in terms of eco-environmental quality will increase by 3.16%, while the proportion of improved areas will decrease by 2.99%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been widely adopted in the building sector. However, it is still an emerging topic in road infrastructure projects despite its enormous potential to solve ongoing issues. While there have been several recent studies on BIM implementation in road projects, there is a lack of research analyzing the actual BIM Uses in road projects as reported in academic and technical documents. Considering this gap, this paper presents a systematic review of BIM Uses and complementary technologies to BIM in road infrastructure projects. The research method consisted of a systematic review composed of five stages: (1) question formulation, (2) searching of relevant documents, (3) document selection, (4) evidence collection, analysis, and synthesis, and (5) results report. A total of 384 documents were collected, from which 134 documents reporting BIM Uses on roads were analyzed. This study has two main contributions. First, 39 BIM Uses were identified, which are classified into nine categories: road design, traffic analysis, soil aspects, road safety, environmental issues, other engineering analysis, construction planning and analysis, cost analysis, and construction monitoring and control. Second, a set of 26 technologies complementary to BIM adoption in roads were identified, among the most prevalent of which are geographic information systems (GISs) and laser scanning. The results serve as a basis for researchers to learn about the status and propose future developments on BIM adoption in road infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to verify whether the transportation infrastructure investment carried out by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has promoted the economic development of its recipient countries. Since the establishment of the AIIB, its investments in infrastructure development, aimed at promoting economic growth in Asian developing countries, have garnered considerable attention. This study selects India, the largest recipient country of the AIIB, as the research object and chooses the Gujarat Road Project as the research case, since it is a completed infrastructure construction investment project in the transportation field. This paper provides an overview of the project's operation and summarizes key factors in the project's implementation. In the data analysis section, the per capita GDP is selected as the explained variable to measure economic development, and the LASSO regression method is used to select several variables that affect economic development. Moreover, the random forest model is used to obtain the causal relationship between road construction and the per capita GDP from 2001 to 2022. The results indicate that road construction in India has a significant positive effect on per capita GDP growth, the Gujarat Road Project supported by the AIIB also has a positive effect on per capita GDP growth, and this effect is stronger than that at the national level. The main contribution of this work is the validation of the investment strategy of the AIIB and the quantification of the economic contribution of AIIB investment projects to the local area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the application of two recently published guidance documents for risk-based assessment of hydraulic actions on bridges, namely the UK Design Manual for Roads and Bridges and the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport's Guidelines, to two case study bridges (Staverton Bridge, UK; Borgoforte Bridge, Italy). This work is one of the first to illustrate how to apply these guidelines. Both documents present risk-based methods for the assessment of hydraulic actions, while exhibiting fundamental differences. For example, the UK method prescribes calculations for local and constriction scour, water depth, and velocity at several cross-sections; by comparison, the Italian method does not prescribe calculations to assess the risk level. For the case studies in this paper, the hydraulic risk obtained for Staverton Bridge resulted as 'High' using both methods. The scour score for the Borgoforte Bridge resulted higher using the Italian method (Medium-High), as compared to the UK approach (Medium). This difference is due to how the guidelines assess the vulnerability associated with the minimum clearance. The comparison of these two risk-based approaches and the resulting discussion may serve as a useful resource for those wishing to develop new risk-based methods for assessing hydraulic actions on bridges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction industry is continuously evolving, seeking innovative solutions to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and improve safety. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, have emerged as a transformative technology in the construction sector, offering numerous advantages in data collection and site management. This paper presents a novel approach for utilizing UAVs to automate the path generation of rollers, a crucial element in the construction of roads and other large-scale infrastructure projects. A UAV was used to scan the target area to create a model; the next step was to generate the path for the rollers. Traditionally, the process of determining optimal roller paths is labor-intensive and reliant on manual surveys and engineering expertise. This study proposes a streamlined workflow that harnesses UAVs equipped with computer vision technology to capture high-resolution topographical data of construction sites. This data is then processed through an algorithm created by the authors that automatically generates optimized roller paths based on several factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important and urgent problems is constructing roads in difficult soil conditions, ensuring their strength, reliability, and normal operation. To create an efficient and competitive transport infrastructure in Kazakhstan, the State Programme of Infrastructural Development "Nurly Zhol" for 2020-2025 was developed. Its main objectives are to improve the technological, scientific, and methodological base, provide resources, and to attract "Big Transit". The paper presents the details of the survey carried out in one of road construction areas. Irrigation canals and periodic and permanent watercourses represent the hydrographic network of the construction site. The analysis of these features and field tests were included in the research. Stamp tests were performed to analyse mechanical properties of embankment soil to provide more reliable information on the mechanical properties of the soil. Structural and technological solutions were adopted based on the field tests and surveys of hydrological conditions. A numerical simulation was used to determine the stability of the road embankment, the results of which showed maximum deformations of 4.5 mm during the operation of road transport. Geosynthetic material was used to reinforce the subgrade. The results of the study have shown that the analysis of factors affecting the stability of engineering structures on difficult soil conditions helps to achieve some improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for accurate topographic surveying data to support ever-growing infrastructural development such as highway construction is huge. Topographic surveying defines a point with X, Y, and Z relative values to create a 3D earth surface model. The Z values represent the vertical height of a point from the benchmark. Vertical heights can be obtained from conventional levelling and Digital Elevations Models (DEMs), as in the case of heights from unmanned aerial vehicle structures from motion photogrammetry (SfM-P) and global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs). GNSS-Real Time Kinematics (RTK) is the most common method used but is sometimes outscored because of limitations in terms of time consumption and physically inaccessible surfaces. Recently, SfMP surveys appear to have been quick and effective in accessing areas that would not have been possible when applying GNSS RTK methods. SfM-P surveys have recently been reorganized through cheap, rapid and elementary methods, but few research findings have been documented. Therefore, the study for validating SfM-P surveys in topographic surveys of highways in Tanzania has proved to be most opportune. In this study, an evaluation was performed by comparing SfM-P survey method heights to GNSS RTK method heights for an area with 3km wide and 19 km long. A total of 39 ground control points was used. The standard deviation between the SfM-P method heights and the GNSS RTK method heights was ±1.4 cm. The samples of elevation data for the preliminary surveying of highways were determined at an 80% accuracy level. However, among the respective heights, only 20% produced a +/- two-centimetre (2 cm) relative precision ─- an extremely high precision level and most satisfactory for detailed topographic surveys. This study confirms that the SfM-P survey can be most helpful in preliminary highway surveys in Tanzania and in surveys of those areas, such as the Dodoma region, with a sparser vegetation cover. However, the SfM-P survey method cannot guarantee good performance to comply with the detailed highway topographic survey height requirements of Tanzania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, the national infrastructure construction market contains enormous opportunities and challenges, and the competition in the highway market is particularly evident. By elaborating the classification and construction process of highway construction, based on the overall situation of highway construction in the end of the 13th Five Year Plan and the highway policies in the 14th Five Year Plan in China, data analysis and comparison methods were adopted to analyze the market operation situation of major construction enterprises and the current main cooperation models in the market. Research results show that, the current domestic highway market is generally stable, and the construction of trunk roads has been saturated. There is a market demand for strengthening the highway chain network, which has led to the transformation of the domestic infrastructure industry towards green and intelligent directions. Based on the above analysis, operational suggestions were proposed from the aspects of supplementing and strengthening the shortcomings of operational elements, optimizing operational layout, and optimizing business models. First, the enterprise should rely on the advantages of the railway market, promoting the construction of a comprehensive transportation hub market that integrates railways, highways, water transportation, etc. Second, the enterprise should expand business development areas and extend the highway market based on new urbanization and rural revitalization. Technology innovation should be emphasized and used to empower the high-quality development of highway construction with the concept of "smart + green". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2010s, infrastructure investment has emerged as a critical field for Japan's foreign policy and international relations. This article examines major characteristics of the development of Japan's external engagement in infrastructure investment from a socio-cultural perspective. It argues that key political figures played a pivotal role in paving the way for Japan's policy shift in infrastructure investment based on social relationality to engage in interactions to build trustworthy relationships. The article also contends that the Japanese government adopted confrontational and accommodating policy options towards China, which reflected inclusivity and complementation in the zhongyong dialectics. Moreover, Japan's policy developments indicate that the logic of relationality, which is sustained by socio-cultural practices in East Asian societies, could explain crucial characteristics of diplomatic policies and relations among East Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examined the uncertainty events encountered in the process of constructing highways and evaluates their impact on South African highway construction costs. Due to the lack of appropriate evaluation of the impact of uncertainty events encountered in the construction process of highway projects, the construction costs of these projects are underestimated. To counteract such underestimation, this research developed an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (Anfis) to assess the impact of uncertainty events involved in the construction of linear infrastructure projects. To validate the Anfis model, the stepwise regression analysis (SRA) and fuzzy Bayesian network (FBN) models were designed, and their results were compared with the outputs of Anfis. The prediction performance comparison proved that Anfis has a higher performance than SRA and FBN. Based on the results of the study, it can be deduced that the Anfis model is an accurate and reliable technique in assessing the impact of uncertainty events on the cost of construction projects. Therefore, the study concluded that using hybrid intelligent machine learning techniques not only minimises the time and difficulty of the estimation process but also reduces the potential inconsistency of correlation between variables in construction cost prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mine development and operation (MDO) is a construction process in the development and operation of mines to provide areas for the construction of facilities and infrastructure such as road construction, Temporary Ore Stockpile (TOS) sites, Permanent Ore Stockpile (POS) locations, etc. The purpose of this research is to manage the mine out area in the MDO TOS planning so that it can increase nickel production at the CUU site at PT. IWIP, which is located in Central Halmahera Regency, North Maluku Province. MDO TOS planning is carried out for 2 weeks. The basic design considerations refer to the data provided by the company, such as the MDO TOS area design, topographical survey, cut and fill, laminating. Processing of MDO TOS planning data in this study used Surpac Gemcom 6.3 software. From the results of data processing, the cut volume was 14,382 BCM, the fill volume was 8,599 BCM, and the laminating volume was 20,303 BCM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]