Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Immersive Visualization In Infrastructure Planning: Enhancing Long-Term Resilience And Sustainability, Dalya Ismael

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Infrastructure decisions today significantly impact future generations' quality of life, especially as severe storms and rising sea levels increasingly threaten communities across the United States. Decision-makers at all levels, including those involved in disaster prevention and response, must address climate change. However, those in infrastructure design and construction often prioritize immediate gains over long-term resilience. Engineering teams typically employ decision tools to manage complexity, but these methods may not highlight the long-term consequences of their choices. This study tests whether integrating Virtual Reality (VR) technology with engineering decision-making tools, can enhance engineers’ ability to visualize the future impacts of their …

Fulfilling Urban Infrastructure Standards To Increase The Carrying Capacity Of Tourism Destination, Shana Fatina, Tri Edhi Budhi Soesilo, Rudy Parluhutan Tambunan

Journal of Environmental Science and Sustainable Development

Labuan Bajo is an emerging coastal tourism destination in Indonesia, which is also part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Komodo Biosphere Reserve located in the East Nusa Tenggara region. Recent tourism developments have transformed Labuan Bajo from a rural area into an urban area, and significant land use changes have followed. This new urban area development will attract tourists as well as population migration. The ongoing issue is to develop the urban infrastructure and facilities of Labuan Bajo in an integrated and sustainable way, considering the carrying capacity following the high demand for tourism and …

Examining The Externalities Of Highway Capacity Expansions In California: An Analysis Of Land Use And Land Cover (Lulc) Using Remote Sensing Technology, Serena E. Alexander, Bo Yang, Owen Hussey, Derek Hicks

Mineta Transportation Institute

There are over 590,000 bridges dispersed across the roadway network that stretches across the United States alone. Each bridge with a length of 20 feet or greater must be inspected at least once every 24 months, according to the Federal Highway Act (FHWA) of 1968. This research developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-based framework for bridge and road inspection using drones with multiple sensors collecting capabilities. It is not sufficient to conduct inspections of bridges and roads using cameras alone, so the research team utilized an infrared (IR) camera along with a high-resolution optical camera. In many instances, the IR camera …

Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment In Nevada, Brad Wimmer

Policy Briefs and Reports

The $45.45 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program’s primary objective is to extend broadband service to all unserved and underserved locations in the U.S. and its territories. Several industry studies predict that the BEAD program can meet its goal of providing universal access to broadband service if eligible entities execute their grant programs well. My review of the BEAD program indicates that policy makers can enhance the likelihood of program success by designing competitive grant programs that give applicants the incentive to undercut the subsidies proposed by their rivals and provide applicants the flexibility to design networks that …

Disrupting The Grid: Encountering Fire And Smoke Through Energy Infrastuctures, Deepti Chatti, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Experiences of fires are mediated by energy infrastructures and refracted through social inequality and difference. In California, a state marked by increasingly intense and frequent wildfires, the grid is a source of fire risk, with historically marginalized groups bearing the brunt of exposures to wildfire smoke. Drawing on research conducted by one of the co-authors in collaboration with California’s Karuk Tribe and Blue Lake Rancheria Tribes, this empirically grounded review article expands our understanding of grids. Extant scholarship presents the grid as a networked infrastructure mediating access to energy and one’s relationship to a collective and the state. We extend …

Public-Ish, Aliah Werth

Masters Theses

Climate change affects public space, and architecture must establish tenets that prioritize pedestrians in this difficult era. Greywater re-use can be a mechanism for creating shade, and in turn, public space.

As heat waves grow more intense, the vast swaths of asphalt that connect commercial zones pose greater risks to public health and to urban vitality. This thesis records the typical material, spatial, and lived conditions of strip malls in urban heat islands, and demands more from infrastructure in public-ish space.

Heat violence weaves through Los Angeles’ built form. Parking space minimums, required setbacks, and height restrictions pull buildings away …

The Evolution Of Global Competition: The Creation Of A Soft Power Escalatory Dilemma, Hunter M. Willis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As relationships between actors have become much more important for security in a globalized world and raw capabilities have become less important, the security landscape has fundamentally changed. When looking at the modern competition between the United States and European Union against China, global infrastructure investment has become a new arena to compete within. When examining each actor’s global infrastructure initiatives, China with the Belt and Road Initiative, the European Union with its Global Gateway, and the United States heading the G7’s initiative dubbed the Build Back Better World initiative, competition is deemed to be present within the global system. …

An Analysis Of Us Energy Policy Within A Shifting Geopolitical Landscape, Rodney Ford

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Through numerous policy initiatives and a catalogue of antagonistic rhetoric, the Biden administration has made it clear since January of 2021 that America will be last when it comes to energy policy. As the rest of the world pursues far-fetched goals to eliminate fossil fuels and usher in the era of green energy, the administration has actively sought to conform to these goals at the expense of the American taxpayer. The issue of climate change, undeniably an issue indeed, will prove itself to be a hallmark of the Biden White House as everything from the tightening of ESG policies to …

Book Review: Under The Weather: Reimagining Mobility In The Climate Crisis., Raymond Murphy

Critical Disaster Studies

Under the Weather: Reimagining Mobility in the Climate Crisis is an insightful, important book that reports on a fine-grained investigation Sodero made of the consequences and response to the disasters resulting from Hurricane Juan in Nova Scotia in 2003 and Hurricane Igor in Newfoundland in 2010, with comparisons to Hurricane Sandy in New York, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the 1998 ice storm in northeastern North America and the Icelandic ash cloud. One original feature is the focus on mobility, how indispensable it is in modern societies, how it is disrupted by extreme weather, and …

Apartheid’S Leviathan : Electricity And The Power Of Technological Ambivalence, Faeeza Ballim

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

A fascinating study that shows how the intersection of technology and politics has shaped South African history since the 1960s.

This book details the development of an interconnected technological system of a coal mine and of the Matimba and Medupi power stations in the Waterberg, a rural region of South Africa near the country’s border with Botswana. South Africa’s state steel manufacturing corporation, Iscor, which has since been privatized, developed a coal mine in the region in the 1970s. This set the stage for the national electricity provider, Eskom, to build coal-fueled power stations in the Waterberg.

Faeeza Ballim follows …

Public-Private Partnership (P3) Success: Critical Success Factors For Local Government Services And Infrastructure Delivery, Antonio M. Lopez, George M. Marakas

Engaged Management ReView

The Public-Private Partnership (P3) approach is a viable option to address the slow growth and burgeoning need to deliver infrastructure projects and services by state and local governments. This study focuses on identifying critical success factors (CSF) that influence the success of P3s for local government service and infrastructure delivery. A framework is presented for integrating relationship and project management CSFs identified from previous literature into P3s. In addition, public agency entrepreneurial orientation is introduced as a potential CSF – a focus that has been absent in previous P3 CSF literature. To empirically assess the influence of these CSFs on …

Strengthening Urban Resilience: Understanding The Interdependencies Of Outer Space And Strategic Planning For Sustainable Smart Environments, Ulpia-Elena Botezatu, Olga Bucovetchi, Adrian V. Gheorghe, Radu D. Stanciu

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The conventional approach to urban planning has predominantly focused on horizontal dimensions, disregarding the potential risks originating from outer space. This paper aims to initiate a discourse on the vertical dimension of cities, which is influenced by outer space, as an essential element of strategic urban planning. Through an examination of a highly disruptive incident in outer space involving a collision between the Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 satellites, this article elucidates the intricate interdependencies between urban areas and outer space infrastructure and services. Leveraging the principles of critical infrastructure protection, which bridge the urban and outer space domains, and …

The Case Against The Case For Zoning, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Critiques an article defending zoning. In particular, the article notes that a traditional justification for zoning is that it conserves community character. This argument fails because when people priced out of exclusive neighborhoods move to other areas, they change the character of the receiving area. Similarly, the argument that zoning prevents infrastructure from being overloaded overlooks the fact that if people priced out of one area move to a cheaper area, the latter area's infrastructure is equally burdened. A third argument is that zoning allows local governments to push the costs of growth to developers- but the sluggish growth of …

Hawker Culture And Its Infrastructure: Experiences And Contestations In Everyday Life, Lily Kong, Aidan Wong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Hawker foods characterize urban Asia, with similarities and differences across cities that forge both cultural commonalities and distinctions. From the itinerant to the fixed location, from the temporary sites to the purpose-built, hawker foods are served in informal settings, with varying degrees of tradition and innovation, hygiene and squalidness, local authenticity and globalized influence. In the side-streets of Beijing where local delicacies such as scorpion are served, to the abundant food cart vendors on Bangkok streets, to the warung (small, typically family-owned eateries) in Surabaya, and the carefully planned and designed hawker centres in Singapore, hawker culture is a distinctive …

Infrastructure Planning For Equitable Coastal Resilience, Wie Yusuf

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

Summary: The infrastructure planning and implementation process is lengthy in terms of time and resources. In response to an articulated need, proposed solutions are considered and studied, stakeholder support gathered, funding and financing identified, and eventually adopted. There are different equity touchpoints: in the planning and implementation process; in terms of awareness of and ability to pursue projects; and in terms of who pays and who benefits.

Infrastructure's (Supra)Sacralizing Effects: Contesting Littoral Spaces Of Fishing, Faith, And Futurity Along Sri Lanka's Western Coastline, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper explores the ways in which infrastructural development can cause the sacred to become a source of political legitimacy, and sacred authority to become a politically charged construct. For resource-dependent communities, the ecological damage caused by infrastructural development can cause ostensibly profane issues to be imbued with sacred meaning and value. With sacralization comes the expectation that figures of sacred authority will campaign for justice on behalf of the communities that they represent. However, when the authority evoked comes from outside the boundaries of institutionalized religion, processes of suprasacralization come into play. By exploring infrastructure’s (supra)sacralizing effects, I demonstrate …

The Evolution Of The Southern Nevada Healthcare Economy: Building The Unlv Academic Health Center, The Lincy Institute

Lincy Institute Events

With the successful launch of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV and the completion of its medical education building, Southern Nevada is positioned to expand its healthcare infrastructure - and its healthcare economy - to create a comprehensive, integrated healthcare system to serve our fast-growing community. As UNLV moves forward with the development of an integrated academic health center within the Las Vegas Medical District, understanding the economic and social benefits of such a transformational project is important to stakeholders throughout the region.

The Lincy Institute hosted representatives of Tripp Umbach - the nation's leading consultant on community …

Access To Power: Electricity And The Infrastructural State In Pakistan, Ijlal Naqvi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Pakistan would desperately like to produce enough electricity, but it usually doesn’t. This is the rare issue on which government and private sector can unite, and it is the cause of suffering for rich and poor alike across the entirety of the country. Despite prioritization by successive governments, targeted reforms shaped by international development actors, and featuring prominently in Chinese Belt and Road Investments, the Pakistani power sector still stifles economic and social life across the country. This book explores state capacity in Pakistan by following the material infrastructure of electricity across the provinces and down into cities and homes. …

Keterpilihan Dinasti Politik Pada Pilkada Kabupaten/Kota Di Indonesia Tahun 2017-2020, Theresia Wahyuni Yuliartiningsih, Vid Adrison

Jurnal Kebijakan Ekonomi

The main purpose of this study was to examine whether the health variable as proxied by government health insurance participation and the infrastructure variable as a proxy for steady road conditions were correlated with the electability of political dynasties in the district/city elections in Indonesia in 2017-2020. This study tested using an average of 5 years before the 2017, 2018 and 2020 elections and the sample used was 508 districts/cities. This study uses a probit and a heck-probit regression model. The results of the selection bias control show that the health interest variable, namely BPJS Non-PBI, significantly reduces the probability …

Blockchain And Distributed Autonomous Community Ecosystems: Opportunities To Democratize Finance And Delivery Of Transport, Housing, Urban Greening And Community Infrastructure, William Riggs, Vipul Vyas, Menka Sethi

Mineta Transportation Institute

This report investigates and develops specifications for using blockchain and distributed organizations to enable decentralized delivery and finance of urban infrastructure. The project explores use cases, including: providing urban greening, street or transit infrastructure; services for street beautification, cleaning and weed or graffiti abatement; potential ways of resource allocation ADU; permitting and land allocation; and homeless housing. It establishes a general process flow for this blockchain architecture, which involves: 1) the creation of blocks (transactions); 2) sending these blocks to nodes (users) on the network for an action (mining) and then validation that that action has taken place; and 3) …

Evaluation Of Sustainability Determinants To Develop A Sustainability Rating System For California Infrastructure Construction Projects, Joseph Kim, Patricia Mccarthy

Mineta Transportation Institute

This study evaluates the important sustainability determinants that affect factors’ success in meeting their sustainability goals when conducting infrastructure construction projects in California. The study implemented the online survey method to evaluate the sustainability characteristics that infrastructure industry professionals currently are aware of under the current situation in California. A data set of 25 validated survey responses is used for statistical data analysis using analysis of variables, Kruskal-Wallis tests, and two sample t-tests. The analysis results showed that the median response values for the six major sustainability categories do not show any significant difference. The results also showed that no …

Between The Commons And The Cosmos: The Sacred Politics Of The Bri In Southeast Asia And Beyond, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper explores how political ecology can advance existing understandings of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its effects, and how the BRI can contribute to recent shifts in the study of political ecology. It argues that the idea of infrastructural overlap can sensitize discourse to the ways in which the materializations of the BRI, as a series of infrastructural megaprojects, intersect with other infrastructural formations, such as the environment and religion. By focusing on the effects of the BRI on resource- dependent communities located between the ‘commons’ and the ‘cosmos’ we can appreciate the sense of existential crisis …

Transforming Minnesota's Early Care And Education Infrastructure, Nicole Frethem

Student Scholarship

In 2021, the Minnesota legislature authorized the Great Start for All task force to present recommendations for how the state can provide “access to affordable, high-quality early care and education that enriches, nurtures, and supports children and their families,” to “all families” in Minnesota.

The early care and education landscape in Minnesota has experienced dramatic changes in programming and investments over the last twenty years. In the early 2000s, the state’s primary child care subsidy program, the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), was moved from the Department of Children, Families and Learning to the Department of Human Services in an …

Support New Business To Solve Old Problems With Kentucky’S Keystone Waste From Bourbon & Brewing, Samuel C. Kessler

Commonwealth Policy Papers

Provided here is a policy solution from the backside of Kentucky bourbon and brewing to upcycle Kentucky’s “keystone” wastes and grow businesses in the process. Potential effects range from removing the bottleneck on bourbon production and producing GHG-friendly biogas to lowering the price of milk.This full whitepaper brief provides an incentive model for keystone wastes which have a provider and a use. It is equally applicable for policymakers or advocates wishing to place a policy incentive behind waste-to-product upcycling, businesses involved with methane sequestration & renewable biogas energy, and shifting regulatory and penalizing models of pollution into incentive model for …

Ecosystem Duties, Green Infrastructure, And Environmental Injustice In Los Angeles, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In Los Angeles, water managers and environmentalist NGOs champion green infrastructure retrofits, installations intended to maximize the water-absorbing capacity of the urban landscape. In such arrangements, the work of water management is necessarily spread among a more-than-human community, including (but certainly not limited to) humans, plants, soils, and gravels. This article analyzes the human labor within these collaborations, tracking when and how this work gets enrolled in networks of water management and circuits of value. I develop the term ecosystem duties to characterize these exertions and as a useful analytic for assessing emergent dynamics of environmental justice.

Dirtiest Cities In The Mountain West, 2021, Olivia K. Cheche, Kristian Thymianos, William E. Brown Jr., Caitlin J. Saladino

Environment

This fact sheet presents rankings of the dirtiest cities in the Mountain West, as originally reported by LawnStarter in “2021’s Dirtiest Cities in the U.S.” The original report examines various measures for 200 major U.S. cities. Twenty-five Mountain West cities are included in the original report and are showcased here.

Battling Over Bathwater: Greywater Technopolitics In Los Angeles, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In Los Angeles, domestic wastewater recycling ("greywater") systems are controversial, loved by local environmentalists and disdained by the city's water agencies. Drawing on fieldwork among greywater advocates and public water agency workers, this article examines how greywater systems function as nodes that unsettle relations between residents and the public agencies that manage the city's water grid. Elaborating the longstanding frictions over greywater reuse in LA reveals how these fixtures are mobilized by advocates to rescript the roles of both individuals and the state within the urban waterscape. Detailing public agency workers' resistance to this form of selective disconnection from the …

Reassessing The Case For Development Charges In Canadian Municipalities, Andrew Sancton

Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance – Publications

“Growth should pay for growth.” This slogan—the common justification for development charges—is rarely challenged in municipal circles. The principle that those who cause new urban growth should pay for the infrastructure associated with it has generally been taken for granted, at least for the last few decades. Development charges evolved from post-1945 subdivision agreements and were initially accepted by most developers as a mechanism for enhancing the likelihood that current residents in a municipality would agree to new development. They now add as much as $90,000 to the cost of a new house in some parts of the Greater Toronto …

Assessment Of The Potential Of Self-Incorporation As A Solution To Roadway Maintenance In Texas Colonias, Moise Dzogolo

Public Affairs Theses - Archive

Colonias are communities that lack basic infrastructures such as water, sewer, and paved roads and that are located within 100 miles of the US-Mexico border. They are generally found in unincorporated areas, and the literature, as well as policy makers, have extensively called for their annexation as a solution to solve the infrastructure issues. This paper examines selfincorporation as an alternative to annexations as cities have consistently avoided colonias when they expand through annexation. The paper has two focuses. The first one consists of analyzing the economic and social aspects of a colonia to determine whether they resemble the ones …

Digital Twin Technology Applications For Transportation Infrastructure - A Survey-Based Study, Hector Cruz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the past couple of decades, various industries have taken advantage of emerging advanced technologies, such as digital twin (DT), to find more effective solutions in their respective areas. In the transportation infrastructure sector, the concept and implementation of DT technologies are slowly gaining traction but lagging behind other major industries. To better understand the limitations, opportunities and challenges for the adoption of DT in this sector, a survey questionnaire was distributed to collect information from industry professionals involved in transportation infrastructure projects. The purpose of this study is to understand how DT technology is being perceived by the industry. …