In line with recent growth strategies as well as the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals, countries are faced with achieving sustainable and inclusive growth. While inclusive growth is imposed as important task for countries to accomplish, its conceptualization is rather puzzling and demands more attention. There is no consensus on the concept of inclusiveness and its major determinants let alone on how to operationalise it. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is twofold. The first part is dedicated to provide deep insight of the concept and point the main characteristics of an inclusive growth wave. This part provides discussion of the literature on inclusive growth together with analysis of the different approaches used in the different definitions of the concept. It finishes with an overview on the empirical attempts to measuring inclusive growth. The second part investigates the influence of technology, represented in form of economic infrastructure, on inclusive growth through the process of poverty reduction. This part of the thesis analyses the influence of access to technology on inclusive growth, where the poverty reduction is the variable in focus. Regression analysis based on a cross-country data set including more then 100 developing countries indicates that technology access help to reduce poverty. The results show that economic infrastructure have negative correlation with poverty, although the explanatory variables are not robust to changes in poverty measures and changes in specifications.

This research project explores the integration of the concept of urban green infrastructure (GI) into three “green plans” developed by four Winnipeg inner-city neighbourhoods. Through a literature review, “green plans” evaluation, key-informant interviews, and a focus group interview, many factors that influence on the urban green infrastructure planning in Winnipeg have been identified. These factors were synthesized with a SWOT-TOWS framework to identify strategies and measures to address situations that these inner-city neighbourhoods might face in the process of urban GI planning. Several conclusions have been drawn to summarize the research results, including: green infrastructure planning in the Winnipeg urban neighbourhood context will be taking different physical forms in terms of network connection, which will have great impact on the GI benefits, GI planning principles and processes, and planning practices in those Winnipeg inner-city neighbourhoods; the “green plans” of the four Winnipeg inner-city neighbourhoods provide valuable lessons for preparing for future urban GI planning; and incorporating urban green infrastructure into current neighbourhood “green plans” will face various opportunities and challenges. Combined with some internal factors, these opportunities and challenges put GI planning in different situations, each of which needs their own strategies and measures.

The Potchefstroom Campus of the North West University contains old water pipelines that are not well documented. Many of the newer water pipelines are not well documented either. A central data storage system that could contain the information with ease of access to update and retrieve information of these waterlines is lacking. There is a need to find a way that existing potable water network data could be represented and stored with GIS. The solution would contribute to the management of the water system on Campus. The aim of this study is to create a seamless geodatabase as a pilot project for the potable water infrastructure at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North West University. The pilot project focuses on buildings E4 and E6. ArcGIS 10 was selected to serve as the key software system that would be applied as a medium to solve and represent the problem. ArcGIS geodatabase serves as a container to store spatial data with. Data with regard to the potable water system was collected from various sources of which available electronic and hard copy CAD data was the general format. A file geodatabase was created in ArcCatalog with a standard co-ordinate system as reference to the data. ArcMap was applied for 2D editing and georeferencing of the CAD drawings which were followed by a composition of attribute data for the created features. The end result was represented in ArcScene for 3D visualization and 3D analysis. It also provided ease of access to the attribute information and relationships and the capability to perform the shortest route analysis. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Geography and Environmental Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

The Potchefstroom Campus of the North West University contains old water pipelines that are not well documented. Many of the newer water pipelines are not well documented either. A central data storage system that could contain the information with ease of access to update and retrieve information of these waterlines is lacking. There is a need to find a way that existing potable water network data could be represented and stored with GIS. The solution would contribute to the management of the water system on Campus. The aim of this study is to create a seamless geodatabase as a pilot project for the potable water infrastructure at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North West University. The pilot project focuses on buildings E4 and E6. ArcGIS 10 was selected to serve as the key software system that would be applied as a medium to solve and represent the problem. ArcGIS geodatabase serves as a container to store spatial data with. Data with regard to the potable water system was collected from various sources of which available electronic and hard copy CAD data was the general format. A file geodatabase was created in ArcCatalog with a standard co-ordinate system as reference to the data. ArcMap was applied for 2D editing and georeferencing of the CAD drawings which were followed by a composition of attribute data for the created features. The end result was represented in ArcScene for 3D visualization and 3D analysis. It also provided ease of access to the attribute information and relationships and the capability to perform the shortest route analysis. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Geography and Environmental Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

Infrastructure development is a topic that has occupied a noble niche within development thinking since the middle of the twentieth century. However, despite over half a century of research concerning infrastructure development processes, structurally-oriented development theories continue to dominate infrastructure development research and praxis. Critically informed approaches to development, which acknowledge the integral role of place, power, and agency to infrastructure research, have yet to make a noticeable mark within infrastructure development policymaking. A review of the multidisciplinary infrastructure and development literature reveals a clear emphasis on structurally-oriented processes of infrastructure provision, and an insufficient understanding of agency-oriented, place-specific processes of infrastructure access, particularly within the context of inequitable societies. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to critically examine infrastructure development processes based on the lived experiences of marginalized populations and to integrate such experiences into the construction of infrastructure knowledge. This dissertation is a compilation of three manuscripts and three additional chapters (the introduction, methodology, and conclusion). The first of these manuscripts, entitled The Science and Politics of Infrastructure Research, is a conceptual paper that critically explores the intersection of infrastructure and development literature. Herein I describe three perspectives, the technocratic, interventionist, and critical perspectives, that articulate the different ways that infrastructure is valued among multiple actors involved in the production of infrastructure knowledge. Among these perspectives, I contend that technocratic and interventionist perspectives have occupied a dominant position with respect to informing infrastructure development policy and praxis throughout the twentieth century. I question whether such dominance is the product of superior scientific rigor or the politicized process of knowledge production. Towards the goal of giving greater prominence to the critical perspective, and in effort to offer a systematic way forward from this post-development critique, I propose the Critical Acquisition Framework. The framework is designed to facilitate an agency-oriented understanding of infrastructure development processes from the perspectives of marginalized groups. Inspired by critical-social theory and capability analyses, the Critical Acquisition Framework helps to understand how marginalized groups deploy their existing capability sets to access infrastructure via multiple overlapping institutions. In addition, the framework helps to envision alternative agency-oriented scenarios of infrastructure access. In essence, the framework demonstrates how the acquisition process influences the capability sets and therefore agency and power of marginalized groups. The framework can be used to assess whether infrastructure ???develops??? according to emic perspectives, or whether infrastructure reifies inequitable power relations. The research is informed by a critical methodological approach and mixed-methods research design. To investigate infrastructure access through the experiences of marginalized groups, the empirical aspect of this research is based on two instrumental case studies located in the northern highlands of Peru. The first case study and second manuscript is entitled: Women???s Acquisition of Domestic Water Services in the District of Cajamarca, Peru. Three impoverished women???s groups, representing rural, peri-urban, and urban locales are analysed, based on the women???s experiences of accessing water through their respective institutions of domestic water provision. Overall, the findings illustrate how marginalized groups exercise agency, as well as the limits to their agency in accessing domestic water services. Considerable variations are found in the quality of domestic water institutions that play a deciding role in women???s experiences of access. The findings also suggest that inefficient institutions may be perpetuated as such in order to maintain the powerful positions of dominant groups involved in domestic water provision. The second case study and third manuscript, is entitled Access for Whom and to What? A Critical Acquisition Framework for Understanding Rural Experiences of Multiple Accessibilities. This paper examines the iterative process through which vendors working within an informal market district repeatedly deploy their multiple capability sets to navigate multiple overlapping institutions that regulate comprehensive access to rural transportation and other privatized infrastructures. Three sub-processes of rural accessibility are investigated: transportation access, market access, and infrastructure access. The findings reveal the complexity of rural accessibility, and suggest that failures of infrastructure access may be attributed to inequitable institutions that regulate the acquisition process. The instrumental case studies have been used to help inform, test, and refine the Critical Acquisition Framework. In doing so, this research has achieved its aim to integrate the experiences of marginalized populations in the construction of infrastructure development knowledge. This research offers a new way of understanding an old problem of infrastructure development. Positioning the notions of agency, power, and place as central tenets of infrastructure development analyses, not only complements the existing body of infrastructure knowledge, but can also lend to a more equitable process of infrastructure development within inequitable societies.

This thesis investigates the relationship between water resources, networks and territory under changing relations of rule in the West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territories. It focuses on the creation of uneven patterns of water infrastructure development since Israeli occupation of the territory in 1967, and on their perpetration following the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority in 1995. This is produced by the interplay of three different imperatives of water resource development: a military-strategic and territorial one, represented by the Israeli Civil Administration, one based on national sovereignty over resources and universal water rights, represented by the Palestinian National Authority, and one based on technical efficiency of the sector, promoted by some international development institutions. The relative strength of these three actors in relation to each other, which in turn is influenced by the political history of the region, determines the physical outcome of water resource development.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, along with many dense cities in developing countries, are stifled by their rudimentary, undersized and poorly maintained waste, water and sanitation infrastructural systems. Port-au-Prince is a city already plagued by poverty and overpopulation, and suffered a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010 that devastated the already fragile republic. Flooded with Not-for-Profit and Non-Government Organizations (NFPs and NGOs) and billions of dollars of aid money following the earthquake, a new challenge arose in finding ways to utilize these new, uncoordinated resources efficiently without falling victim to dependency on aid money and other fleeting, external resources. The thesis proposes a series of infrastructural components for decentralized waste, water and sanitation that can address the cultural and infrastructural challenges of diverse sites within city, as city-wide systems have proved unsuitable and have not been maintained. The proposal deals with resources and wastes on-site, in order to reduce dependence on often expensive methods of waste collection and water provision. It diverts waste and excess water from ravines; reduces waste strewn throughout the city; creates community accountability and engagement, and in doing so, strives to improve quality of life. Waste is furthermore utilized in fueling other complementary processes, generating a micro-scale waste economy. The solution to making Port-au-Prince’s infrastructural systems viable and self-sustaining is to turn them into economic drivers that produce businesses and jobs through the collection, sorting, processing and re-use of wastes and water that in turn result in safer and more sanitary living conditions, as well as helping to re-organize a city destroyed by the earthquake into productive neighbourhoods with local community nodes.

The goal of this dissertation research is to model risk in delivery, operation and maintenance phases of infrastructure asset management. More specifically, the two main objectives of this research are to quantify and measure financial risk in privatizing and operational risks in maintenance and rehabilitation of infrastructure facilities. To this end, a valuation procedure for valuing large-scale risky projects is proposed. This valuation approach is based on mean-risk portfolio optimization in which a risk-averse decision-maker seeks to maximize the expected return subject to downside risk. We show that, in complete markets, the value obtained from this approach is equal to the value obtained from the standard option pricing approach. Furthermore, we introduce Coherent Valuation Procedure (CVP) for valuing risky projects in partially complete markets. This approach leads to a lower degree of subjectivity as it only requires one parameter to incorporate user's risk preferences. Compared to the traditional discounted cash flow analysis, CVP displays a reasonable degree of sensitivity to the discount rate since only the risk-free rate is used to discount future cash flows. The application of this procedure on valuing a transportation public-private partnership is presented. %and demonstrate that the breakeven buying price of a risky project is equal to the value obtained from this valuation procedure. Secondly, a risk-based framework for prescribing optimal risk-based maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) policies for transportation infrastructure is presented. These policies guarantee a certain performance level across the network under a predefined level of risk. The long-term model is formulated in the Markov Decision Process framework with risk-averse actions and transitional probabilities describing the uncertainty in the deterioration process. Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) is used as the measure of risk. The steady-state risk-averse M&R policies are modeled assuming no budget restriction. To address the short-term resource allocation problem, two linear programming models are presented to generate network-level polices with different objectives. In the first model, decision-maker minimizes the total risk across the network, and in the second model, the highest risk to the network performance is minimized.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, along with many dense cities in developing countries, are stifled by their rudimentary, undersized and poorly maintained waste, water and sanitation infrastructural systems. Port-au-Prince is a city already plagued by poverty and overpopulation, and suffered a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010 that devastated the already fragile republic. Flooded with Not-for-Profit and Non-Government Organizations (NFPs and NGOs) and billions of dollars of aid money following the earthquake, a new challenge arose in finding ways to utilize these new, uncoordinated resources efficiently without falling victim to dependency on aid money and other fleeting, external resources. The thesis proposes a series of infrastructural components for decentralized waste, water and sanitation that can address the cultural and infrastructural challenges of diverse sites within city, as city-wide systems have proved unsuitable and have not been maintained. The proposal deals with resources and wastes on-site, in order to reduce dependence on often expensive methods of waste collection and water provision. It diverts waste and excess water from ravines; reduces waste strewn throughout the city; creates community accountability and engagement, and in doing so, strives to improve quality of life. Waste is furthermore utilized in fueling other complementary processes, generating a micro-scale waste economy. The solution to making Port-au-Prince’s infrastructural systems viable and self-sustaining is to turn them into economic drivers that produce businesses and jobs through the collection, sorting, processing and re-use of wastes and water that in turn result in safer and more sanitary living conditions, as well as helping to re-organize a city destroyed by the earthquake into productive neighbourhoods with local community nodes.

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