Search results for " infrastructure"
showing 10 items of 269 documents
Principles of Calculation of Track Access Charges in Rail Freight Transport in Poland
2019
Non-discriminatory rules for access to the railway infrastructure as well as transparent pricing system are the essential factors of ensuring that the freight transport in Poland is competitive enough. Infrastructure managers pass some categories of their costs (e.g. for maintaining of railway infrastructure) on railway undertakings in the form of access charges verified andaccepted by the Polish regulatory body. In general, approximately one – third of their costs shall be paid by railway undertakings. Given that access charges are treated as one of the most important factors for both railway undertakings and railway infrastructure man-agers. The aim of this article is to review the main p…
Fair Planning and Affordability Housing in Urban Policy. The Case of Syracuse (Italy)
2016
Equalization can be implemented in the planning process by means of several tools. The Syracuse’s Master Plan has used “urban negotiation” to obtain land for facilities and public infrastructure in different urban areas basing on the rule of the transfer of a portion of land in return for the building permission for the remaining part of each property to be developed. The Master Plan also aimed at providing social housing because the economic crisis has amplified the gap between housing market prices and household income. This study proposes an equalization and compensation model to support the urban negotiation for providing the indexes of a fair and convenient development of several inter…
Project finance in the energy industry: new debt-based financing models
2012
The paper aims to examine the development of new financing models for project finance to attract private investors to finance large European energy infrastructure projects. In particular, the paper investigates the uniqueness of the project finance as a rapidly growing field in finance, the financial characteristics of the project bond market as one of the vehicles for funding energy projects, and the role of the credit support provided by the European Investment Bank and the European Union to promote the bond-based financing schemes. The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 provides a general description of project finance. Section 2 identifies the economic reasons for using project fi…
Public-Private Partnerships: Agency Costs in the Privatization of Social Infrastructure Financing
2019
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been subjected to considerable public debate. In particular, this debate has concerned PPP financing and its implications. Using insights from agency theory, this study aims to develop a theoretical understanding of PPP financing. The following research question is investigated: How does the privatization of financing decrease or increase agency costs in social infrastructure PPPs? A comparative case study consisting of four Norwegian PPP projects with different financial configurations is undertaken. The findings suggest that the private sector is risk averse, increasing the cost of capital. In addition, private financing does not seem to have the i…
Life-Cycle Costing Decision-Making Methodology and Urban Intersection Design: Modelling and Analysis for a Circular City
2021
The importance of being circular reflects one of the key concepts of the life-cycle thinking that promotes the sustainable production of goods and services. If it is true that the analysis of the product life-cycle is fundamental to optimize the use of resources and to plan for the future reduction of adverse effects on urban environment, it is also true that there are still several barriers covering conceptual and practical issues which hinder the building of shared approaches for the economic evaluation of infrastructure projects. The chapter presents a case study where the Life-Cycle Cost methodology is used to compare three alternative intersection projects based on their total life-cyc…
Effect of sodium borohydride and hydrogen peroxide pretreatments on soda pulping of sugar maple (Acer saccharum)
2021
For recovering value-added wood-based organic material prior to delignification, sodium borohydride (NaBH4) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) pretreatments under alkaline conditions were performed before soda pulping of sugar maple (Acer saccharum) chips with sodium hydroxide (NaOH). In this investigation, it was determined whether the pulp yield could be increased by partly stabilizing the hemicelluloses by these pretreatments, and simultaneously obtains lower pulp kappa numbers. The results indicated that when aiming to the same kappa numbers (i.e., kappa numbers 14.3-20.5), roughly 3% higher pulp yield could be achieved if the chips were pretreated with alkaline 0.5% NaBH4 solutions, compared…
Land Information Systems for Development (LIS4D): A Neglected Area within ICT4D Research?
2015
The lack of accurate information about land and land ownership is a major challenge for developing countries. Despite the important role of information systems (IS) in overcoming such weaknesses, the research area of land information systems has been scattered within IS, as well as within the area of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D). Based on a literature review research contributions are synthesized into four main perspectives, namely Development, eGovernment, Geographical information systems (GIS) and Land law, policy, and administration. These perspectives form the basis for the suggested conceptualization of the land information systems for development …
Ecosocial Innovations and Their Capacity to Integrate Ecological, Economic and Social Sustainability Transition
2019
The article contributes to sustainability transition research by indicating the significance of transformative grassroots innovations in the context of social work research. We introduce the integrative concept of ecosocial innovation in order to demonstrate how grassroots innovations can successfully combine social, ecological and economic aspects of a sustainability transition. By ecosocial innovations, we refer to social innovations with a strong ecological orientation (e.g., recycling workshops, urban gardening, participatory unemployment projects and new local economies). The data consists of 50 examples of ecosocial innovations in Finland, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the UK. We invest…
THE EXPECTED DEMOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES ON THE PROVISION OF EDUCATION SERVICES IN THE NEIGHBOURHOODS OF RIGA
2020
This paper discusses the spatial extent of population change and provides new insights into the relationships between demographic characteristics and the provision of education services in urban neighbourhoods of Riga. Thus, our empirical evidence confirms that the provision of social infrastructure is fundamentally dependent on the nature of demographic processes. The aim of this paper is twofold: to explore the spatial extent of changes in the number of pre-school and school-aged children in Riga, and to assess how the demographic change of particular age cohorts are associated with the provision of educational establishments at the neighbourhood level. Using available statistics and base…
ASSESSMENT OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES FOR PLANNING OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE AT THE REGIONAL LEVEL
2019
Ecosystem services (ES) are defined as the benefits that human beings derive from ecosystem functions. Assessment and mapping of these benefits are crucial for sustainable environmental planning and future natural capital. Green infrastructure (GI) is natural or semi-natural territories that provide wide range of ES. Human affected ecosystems tend to fail to provide certain sets of ES due to the trade-offs among those services, which could be mitigated through implementation of GI. Mapping of ES, as well as assessing the interactions among various ES and analysing their supply potential’s cold/hot spots considerably enhances and substantiates the planning process of GI, particularly at the …