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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Influence Of The Electric Supply Industry On Economic Growth In Less Developed Countries, Edward Richard Bee Aug 2016

The Influence Of The Electric Supply Industry On Economic Growth In Less Developed Countries, Edward Richard Bee

Dissertations

This study measures the impact that electrical outages have on manufacturing production in 135 less developed countries using stochastic frontier analysis and data from World Bank’s Investment Climate surveys. Outages of electricity, for firms with and without backup power sources, are the most frequently cited constraint on manufacturing growth in these surveys.

Outages are shown to reduce output below the production frontier by almost five percent in Africa and by a lower percentage in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Production response to outages is quadratic in form. Outages also increase labor cost, reduce exports …


Revisiting An Information Infrastructure For Development: Exploring The Cost Of Information In Pacific Island Development, William J. Tibben Jan 2016

Revisiting An Information Infrastructure For Development: Exploring The Cost Of Information In Pacific Island Development, William J. Tibben

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been associated with development programmes for many decades. A theme of Lamberton's commentary on such initiatives focuses on the lack of attention given to information as a key factor in the development process. His writing reiterated a number of arguments that he saw as being fundamental to the application of an information perspective to development issues. With a focus on agricultural development policy in the Pacific region, the paper uses a number of propositions that are suggested by Lamberton to analyse contemporary development initiatives in Pacific Island agriculture. These propositions focus attention on information …


Vulnerability Analysis Of Hydrological Infrastructure To Flooding In Coastal Cities - A Graph Theory Approach, Robert Ighodaro Ogie, Tomas Holderness, Sarah Dunn, Etienne Turpin Jan 2016

Vulnerability Analysis Of Hydrological Infrastructure To Flooding In Coastal Cities - A Graph Theory Approach, Robert Ighodaro Ogie, Tomas Holderness, Sarah Dunn, Etienne Turpin

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Hydrological infrastructure such as pumps and floodgates are invaluable assets for mitigating flooding in coastal cities. These infrastructure components are often vulnerable to damage or failure due to the impact of flood waters, thus exacerbating the flood hazards and causing significant loss of life and destruction to property worth billions of dollars. Hence, there is a growing need worldwide to enhance the understanding of flood vulnerability and to develop key metrics for assessing it. This study proposes an approach for measuring the vulnerability of hydrological infrastructure to flood damage in coastal cities. In this approach, a hydrological infrastructure flood vulnerability …


The Effect Of Community Connectivity On Water And Sanitation Systems In Rural Panama, M.C. Moritz Jan 2016

The Effect Of Community Connectivity On Water And Sanitation Systems In Rural Panama, M.C. Moritz

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The world has yet to realize universal access to water and sanitation. Various academic and professional fields provide frameworks for understanding water and sanitation access, but none directly consider the impact of community connectivity. Community connectivity refers to the infrastructures linking rural communities with urban centers. These infrastructures fall under the broad categories of transportation, energy, and telecommunication. This paper examines 23 rural Panamanian communities and compares connectivity measures with the functionality of the communities’ rural water and sanitation systems (RWSS). Community connectivity was evaluated with the Community Connectivity Analysis Tool (CCAT), while the water and sanitation systems were evaluated …