Fred Moavenzadeh

Construction industry in developing countries

Abstract This paper provides a review of the construction capability available in the developing countries to meet the demand for shelter. It discusses the role of construction in the process of development and its importance to economic growth. It considers the issues facing the growth of a viable indigenous construction industry in the developing world within the context of the activities involved in the creation of constructed facilities – planning, design, construction and maintenance; it also examines the environment within which the industry has developed. For each construction activity the paper reviews available capabilities, the various resources needed for the development of an indigenous industry, and some possible means of accommodating these needs.

Influence of Highway Project Characteristics on Contract Type Selection: Empirical Assessment

The selection of appropriate type of contract for a highway maintenance project can be influenced by project attributes such as the expected cost and duration. However, the expected project cost and planned duration depend on other project attributes and also depend on each other. These simultaneous relationships complicate the identification of the appropriate contract for a highway maintenance project. While previous research has provided insight into the factors that affect project cost and duration, the validity of the findings may have been stymied by a lack of explicit consideration of the simultaneous relationships between project duration and cost. In this paper, we develop a framework based on a three-stage least-squares model to identify the most appropriate type of contract given the project’s attributes while explicitly accounting for the simultaneity between project cost and duration. The framework can also be used to estimate the expected contract duration and cost on the basis of the projec...

A methodology for intercity transportation planning in Egypt

Abstract This paper describes the development of the Egypt Intercity Transportation Model, designed to assess alternative transportation investment, maintenance, operating and pricing policies within Egypt. The Intercity Model encompasses movements of both intercity freight and intercity passengers on highway, railway, and waterways, and predicts transportation system performance, costs, and impacts resulting from different policies that may be specified. The Model incorporates a number of state-of-the-art analytical procedures and features particularly suited to analyzing transportation problems in developing countries, including: (1) An equilibration procedure which provides a simultaneous solution of the generation, distribution, modal split and assignment problems; (2) Interactions among investment, maintenance, operating and pricing policies through the use of simulation models (rather than closed-form functions) to estimate link costs; and (3) Explicit treatment of constraints on availability of transportation services—not only link capacity (congestion), but also fleet capacity and the potential inability of modes to satisfy all of the latent demand.

Sustainability of the urban environment: A case for energy efficiency in the building sector

Summary Because of the enormous size of their waste streams, cities have a great impact on the environment. One of the major sources of that waste is energy consumption, and one of the major consumers of energy in cities is the building sector. Reducing the consumption of energy by that sector would reduce the adverse effects cities have on the environment. Per capita energy consumption within the developed world varies from country to country—a result of different policies, not different technologies. The most effective policies in reducing pollution are those such as emission changes and permits that are market driven. However, because it is extremely difficult to assess the full costs of emissions and because market‐driven programs cost more than most people are willing to pay, we are not about to see the wide‐scale adoption of the most effective policies for reducing the pollution whose accumulative and incremental adverse effects continue to grow.

POLICY AND INSTITUTIONAL MEASURES FOR REDUCING TRANSPORT-GENERATED POLLUTION

This paper focuses on policies to lessen the transportation sectors adverse effects on the environment and the institutional systems that make the success of those policies more or less likely in developed and developing countries.

RESEARCH NEEDS IN TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES: GUIDEWAY TECHNOLOGY AND MATERIALS RESEARCH

Abstract The need to rehabilitate our national infrastructure in emerging as the dominant market situation surrounding transportation facilities today. However, current programs in, and proposals for, transportation research have not explored the issues surrounding the needed national commitment on a scale commensurate with the magnitude of the renewal market. As a result, the national research agenda in transportation facilities seems to be aimed at only an incremental advance in the state of the art. The growing requirements for infrastructure renewal are driven by both increasing demand for transportation and reduced supply due to deterioration and depletion. While current techniques and practices to rehabilitate existing facilities have been derived largely from those of new construction, the markets for the two types of activity and the types of work involved are different in some important respects, including project scale, technology, management and financing. As annual rehabilitation expenditures increase, issues of productivity and cost of rehabilitation will become increasingly important, and the need for research that recognizes the special constraints associated with rehabilitation will become more evident. A fortuitous confluence of market and technology trends currently exists for a series of technological breakthroughs in the guideway construction industry through the remainder of this century. New technologies in computers, automated systems and exotic materials have been developed to the point where they are ready to be exploited commercially in transportation construction. Recent developments in transport facility finance and management also have important implications for infrastructure renewal. At the same time, the emerging infrastructural renewal market is sufficiently large, dispersed and diverse to guarantee not only significant payoffs for private industry research and development, but also spinoffs to improve the construction industrys productivity in other markets as well. A creative response to the infrastructure problem should therefore focus on improvements in the productivity of rehabilitation activities through major advances in technology and management that result in more durable, more reliable and cheaper repairs, so that the available resources could produce the needed output. This will require major commitments to research, both to develop or adapt the novel technology to the field of interest, and to assess the implications of that technology or the resulting gains in productivity on industry operations and costs.

TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE URBAN TRANSPORT: FINDING SYNERGIES BETWEEN LOWERING LOCAL AND GLOBAL IMPACTS

The transport sector is a worthy focus for sustainability first, because it is tightly linked with the increased importance of cities as human settlements; second, because it is a significant polluter (locally, regionally, and globally); and third, because it is growing (as measured by passenger miles, fuel consumption, vehicles, etc.) in both developed and developing countries. However, only a certain number of policy and technology options will lower transport’s adverse effect on both local and global environments. Identifying approaches that can solve simultaneously both of these goals is very important given the differences in environmental priorities, characteristics of transport sectors, and appropriateness of technologies both among and between developed and developing countries. The following two sections describe the impact of transport on urban pollution and climate change. In the third section, we revisit the importance of policy selection in solving both local and global environmental goals.

The Sustainability Challenge for Climate Change: Balancing Inter- and Intragenerational Equity

Sustainable development or sustainability is generally defined as restraining present consumption to ensure that future generations will inherit a resource base or opportunity set no smaller than that enjoyed by previous generations. In meeting this intergenerational goal, sustainability is concerned with two types of limits the environment imposes on growth or development—source limits and sink limits. Source limits refer to the environment’s finite capacity to provide resources—both renewable and nonrenewable, and both production inputs and essential, nonsubstitutable “natural” services. The sink limit refers to the environment’s capacity to assimilate the wastes that economic growth and development cause.