Browsing by Subject "Infrastructure"

Now showing 1 - 19 of 19

A Nuclear State of Mind: Identifying the Impact of Climate Change on Nuclear Security
(2024-05-01) Jaffery, Zulfikar; Nordhougen, Greg; Padmanabhan, Sam; Woyda, Trevor
There is a broad assumption that nuclear energy is ready to solve climate change without a proper understanding of how climate change will impact the civilian nuclear energy industry. It is this assumption that is interrogated within the research and analysis portions of this literature review. The sweeping assumption that nuclear energy is ready for global dependence would have dangerous implications if it were wrong. Even if it is right, the process required to reconfigure the energy industry in order to prepare it for the world’s demand for energy would still necessitate incredible strides. This literature review hopes to shine a spotlight on some of the unanswered questions while offering a vignette of the industry as it currently sits today.
Assessing the Economic Impact and Health Effects of Bicycling in Minnesota
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2016-12) Qian, Xinyi; Linscheid, Neil; Tuck, Brigid; Lindsey, Greg; Jessica, Schoner; Pereira, Mark; Berger, Aaron
This project estimated the economic impact of the bicycling industry and events in Minnesota, estimated bicycling infrastructure use across the state, and assessed the health effects of bicycling in the Twin Cities metropolitan area (TCMA). A survey of bicycling-related manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, non-profit and advocacy groups found the industry produced a total of $779.9 million of economic activity in 2014. Using data from multiple sources, the number of bicycle trips in Minnesota was estimated to be between 75.2 and 96 million annually. The TCMA accounts for 69%-72% of the total number of trips and miles traveled in Minnesota. Bicycling events, including races, non-race rides, fundraising events, mountain bicycling events, high school races, and bicycle tours, produced a total of $14.3 million of economic activity in 2014. All six types of bicycling events mainly attract white, non-Hispanic male participants. “Riding my bicycle” was the most frequently identified reason to attend an event (except for fundraising event participants), and there is a variety of enjoyable attributes that differed across event types. Overall, respondents were satisfied with the events. Bicycle commuting prevents 12 to 61 deaths per year, saving $100 million to $500 million. Bicycle commuting three times per week is also linked to 46% lower odds of metabolic syndrome, 32% lower odds of obesity, and 28% lower odds of hypertension, all of which lower medical costs. Project findings tell a compelling story for the positive effects of bicycling and provide direct evidence that supports the efforts of promoting bicycling-related industry, infrastructure, events, and activities.
Colonial Sublime: Infrastructure, Landscape, and Traveling Cinemas in Korea, 1898-1926
(2019-08) Ahn, Sejung
This dissertation examines the link between Korea’s technological modernity and its earliest cinematic history through the aesthetic lens of the sublime. Cinema was introduced to Korea in conjunction with the expansion of infrastructures under a direct and indirect system of colonial rule. And it immediately served as a technique and technology of national and imperial governance, as a way of forging new political subjects during a tumultuous time of social change. Focusing on primitive representations of film technology, the aesthetic conventions of travel film genres, preliminary forms of state-policy films, chain drama’s production of national landscapes, and the influence of colonial urbanism on the building of cinematic networks, this dissertation reconstructs the contested beginning of motion-picture technology in Korea during which the Korean experience of modernity was shaped and defined in negotiation with nation-building and globalization. In doing so, my approach takes a distinct perspective with recourse to the aesthetics of the colonial sublime. In the first place, as an aesthetic category in origin that refers to the subject’s emotions of shock and terror, the sublime is a useful concept to understand the formation of the strangely masochistic spectatorship of early cinema for which sensation and astonishment were so central. With the modification of the adjective “colonial,” however, the colonial sublime has also lent itself well to an examination of the aestheticization of colonial politics and the colonial politics of aesthetics. By bringing together early cinema studies and studies on colonial modernity in Korea, I show that cinema as visual technology — along with other infrastructural projects — has been constantly aestheticized as a spectacle in the development of cinematic culture in Korea.
Does public capital spur private investment in developing economies?
(2014-10) Zoff, Mark Steven
What drives private investment in a country is a question of paramount importance to both researchers and policy makers. Additions to a country's private capital stock help drive both faster growth and faster wealth creation, which often creates many positive spillover effects for a country's populace. In a study of twenty-two developing countries over a total of 660 country-year observations utilizing vector error correction models, this report found preliminary evidence that public capital stock growth positively caused growth in future values of the private capital stock in a country. Additionally, this study found that changes in the level of the population and changes in the strength of political institutions also caused changes in the level of the stock of private capital in a developing country. Tentative causal evidence also existed for changes in the domestic credit to the private sector as a share of GDP, financial openness, and the size of the economy causing changes in the stock of private capital in a country. Policy makers in developing countries should focus future efforts on improving the quality of their institutions and providing high quality infrastructure, both traditional and social, if they want to help increase their country's private capital formation and, consequently, growth.
Envisioning the Arts Avenue: A Pedestrian Design and Lighting Study for the Sheridan Neighborhood
(2006) Maleitzke, Adam
Funding China's Urban Infrastructure: Revenue Structure and Financing Approaches
(Center for Transportation Studies, 2011-05) Zhirong, Zhao; Chengxin, Cao
With the rapid increase in the need for urban infrastructure, the issue of infrastructure funding has become more and more essential. This paper focuses on the following three issues: first, it clarifies the trend and regional pattern of infrastructure funding. Second, this paper further discusses funding mechanisms from the perspective of government and market. Third, this paper will evaluate current trend and pattern based on the five theoretical dimensions. Concerning the trends of infrastructure funding, the growth of market financing is faster than fiscal revenue; therefore, the importance of fiscal revenue has decreased. Regionally, the east has the highest reliance on fiscal revenue, which is largely due to its high land transfer fee. Municipality has the highest proportion of market financing. From the perspective of government and market, the importance of government-leading mode has decreased, while UDIC-leading and private sector involvement play a more and more essential role.
How Affordable Is Transportation? A Context-Sensitive Framework
(Center for Transportation Studies, 2011-05) Fan, Yingling; Huang, Arthur
Transportation affordability refers to the financial burden households bear in purchasing transportation services. Traditional measures, which focus on what share of household disposable income or total budget goes to transportation services, often fail to consider the wide variation in households? transportation needs and locational settings. In this project, we propose a contextualized transportation affordability analysis framework that differentiates population groups based upon their socio-demographics, the built environment, and the policy environment. The necessity of such a context-sensitive framework is demonstrated via a case study of the Twin Cities metropolitan area, which shows heterogeneity among different population groups in terms of their transportation needs and resource availability. The proposed context-sensitive framework points to two dilemmas associated with transportation affordability. First, the socio-economically disadvantaged group has the lowest auto ownership rate, yet its transportation needs are better served by automobiles. Second, while automobiles can reduce transportation hardship for the socio-economically disadvantaged, the existing auto-oriented urban landscape in the U.S. requires more travel for access to destinations, which leads to higher transportation costs. The dilemmas call for a multi-modal transportation solution: reducing societal auto dependence and providing financial subsidies for car access among disadvantaged populations are equally important to enhance transportation affordability and social welfare.
Impacts of low-speed vehicles on transportation infrastructure and safety
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2012) Hunter-Zaworski, K. M.
Increasing numbers of low-speed electric vehicles (LSVs) now operate on public roadways. These vehicles are designed to be used within protected environments and on roadways with a maximum posted speed of 25 mph. Currently, these vehicles are not subject to the same federal requirements for occupant protection as passenger cars. The research reported in this paper investigated safety standards, operating regulations, and LSV manufacturer materials from sources around the world. The purpose of the research was to determine the positive and negative impacts that LSVs, including neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) and medium-speed electric vehicles (MSEVs), are likely to have for states such as Oregon and whether adjustments in state regulations are needed to ensure that LSVs do not negatively affect road safety and traffic operations or expose LSVs operators to undue risk. The US and Canadian federal motor vehicle safety agencies have harmonized their regulations and stipulated the maximum operating speed of these vehicles; however, state and local roadway authorities have regulated the maximum speed of roadways and intersection characteristics on which these vehicles can operate. The significant recommendations of this research are: (1) Appropriate state statues for LSVs should be amended such that LSVs are limited to public roadways with a maximum operating speed of 25 mph and are restricted to crossing higher speed roadways at four-way stop or signal-controlled intersections; and (2) Local transportation authorities should develop parallel or secondary low-speed roadway networks that connect residential neighborhoods with major activity centers.
Infrastructure X-Ray: Piloting Asset Management in Ramsey
(Resilient Communities Project (RCP), University of Minnesota, 2017) Walburg, Lauren; Guo, Yuxuan; Pattsner, Max
This project was completed as part of the 2017-2018 Resilient Communities Project (rcp.umn.edu) partnership with the City of Ramsey. Cities own and maintain a large amount of infrastructure, which can be difficult to track for purposes of maintenance and replacement. To better understand the condition and location of each asset the City owns, the City of Ramsey asked students in Dr. Fernando Burga’s Land Use Planning class to investigate various asset management programs, their functionality, and their usefulness for tracking infrastructure and other public assets. The students interviewed staff in other cities that use four popular asset management programs--PubWorks, CityWorks, Infraseek, and Cartegraph--and piloted several of the programs using City data. The report concludes with recommendations for further investigating several of the most promising asset management programs. The students’ final report is available.
Low-Cost Engineering Infrastructure Safety Improvements
(Transportation Engineering and Road Research Alliance (TERRA), 2011-07) Transportation Engineering and Road Research Alliance (TERRA)
This 2-page fact sheet describes some low-cost, effective engineering safety improvements that DOTs can integrate into their road building and restoration programs, particularly regarding road/lane departures and intersection crashes.
Megaprojects and Literature in Chile, Panama, and Brazil
(2021-08) Frye, Timothy
This dissertation analyzes the interrelation of infrastructure, nature, and the human body in Latin American literature. At the mid-twentieth century, infrastructure became the primary tool of developmental statecraft and across Latin America megaprojects became the idols of modernity that obscured environmental effects on vulnerable populations in adjacent regions. While literary analysis of environmental change often fails to consider the complex entanglements of infrastructures and non-human nature and runs the risk of reproducing age-old binaries of nature and culture, this dissertation addresses these concerns in two ways: first, by expanding what is considered traditional infrastructure—like roads and lead pipes—to hydrologic, plant, and chemical infrastructures, and second, by analyzing how these infrastructures operate as environmental forces of power and control. This dissertation employs an assemblage theory framework that focuses on intersections of environmental change and the discourses and literatures that create meaning. The Chuquicamata mine in Northern Chile, the Panama Canal, and Zona Franca of Manaus emerge in literary works by Pablo Neruda, Gil Blas Tejeira, Joaquín Beleño, Márcio Souza, and Milton Hatoum as complex assemblages of infrastructures and non-human nature that enmesh and poison the bodies of miners, Afro-Antilleans, and those living on the urban margins of Latin America. This dissertation makes the following claims: first, literary works function as testimony that bears witness to the hidden, negative effects of megaprojects; and second, these negative effects can be traced in the literary text at the overlap between infrastructure, non-human nature, and the human body.
Minnesota Network of Parks and Trails: Framework January 2011
(Center for Changing Landscapes, 2011) Vogel, Mary; Ek, Alan R.; Davenport, Mae; Schneider, Ingrid; Zerger, Cindy; Schreurs, Brian; Oftedal, Andrew; Vanagaite, Egle; Smith, Alex; Filter, Lisa; Date, Andrea; Picone, Lisa
Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program Evaluation Study, Phase 2
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2011-05) Götschi, Thomas; Krizek, Kevin J.; McGinnis, Laurie; Lucke, Jan; Barbeau, Joe
The Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program (NTPP) is a congressionally mandated program (SAFETEA-LU Section 1807) that, since 2006, has provided roughly $25 million each to four communities—Columbia, Missouri; Marin County, California; Minneapolis area, Minnesota; Sheboygan County, Wisconsin—to spur levels of walking and cycling via a variety of planning measures. The University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies is leading the community-wide population surveys for the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program (NTPP), specifically in phase 2, to measure changes in levels of walking and bicycling as a result of the enhanced conditions for walking and bicycling. To evaluate impacts of the program, two community-wide surveys were conducted before (phase 1: 2006) and after (phase 2: 2010) the pilot program. This report describes the evaluation efforts based on community-wide population surveys. In contrast to project-specific evaluations, community-wide surveys serve the purpose of representatively assessing community-wide levels of nonmotorized travel behavior, which serve as the foundation for subsequent benefit calculations. The survey in phase 1 consisted of a short mail-out questionnaire and a computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) among respondents to the short questionnaire. In phase 2 the short questionnaire was integrated in the CATI. The final sample in phase 1 consisted of 1279 complete records and in phase 2 of 1807 complete records. Statistical analysis focused on evaluating differences between phase 1 and phase 2 in the core variables on nonmotorized travel behavior. The detailed analysis did not reveal any consistent or statistically significant differences between phases 1 and 2. It is important to point out that the inability to detect significant patterns of change is not synonymous to no change occurring. The report discusses some of the factors that make this type of research challenging.
Re-defining rural community spatially separated neighborhoods.
(2010-08) Schonborn, Bradley Michael
Frost is small agricultural community in rural southern Minnesota that developed at the turn of the 20th century. In its prime it had a flourishing Main Street with all of the necessities that were required to sustain a small community. There were grocers, hardware stores, barbers, cafes, churches and schools. Today most of those things are gone. Buildings sit empty and lots sit vacant. There are communities like Frost all across the country who have been watching a slow and continuous migration take place over the last few decades. Young people have been leaving the country for opportunities in urban areas. Frost is important because it is emblematic of thousands of other small cities and towns suffering from the effects of this rural migration. The topic of “rural community” is generating a great deal of discussion today amongst policy makers, sociologists, planners and economists. The debate is focused around how rural communities are defined in terms of today’s changing social and economic pressures. Small towns that were once individual self sustaining communities today are reliant on larger cities within their surrounding area for the goods and services that are a part of daily life. Some people suggest that there is no role for a small town like Frost in this evolution. I believe there is and I believe there is a role that designers can play in the planning and design of a rural community. I am interested in this topic because this is a part of me; it is where I am from.
The Role of Infrastructure in Development
(2020-10) Keita, Ibrahim
This dissertation consists of three essays that address the role of infrastructure in different sectors- education, manufacturing, and agriculture- in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the first essay, I estimate the impacts of access to electricity on student performance in the 9th and 12th grades examinations in Ghana. In Particular, I use nighttime satellite imagery to estimate the impact of luminosity on student performance. The results suggest luminosity matters the most when there is a considerable study time constraint. In the second essay, using the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, I investigate the link between access to infrastructure-electricity, transportations, and telecommunications- and the productivity of manufacturing firms and its role in firms’ location decision in 29 Sub-Saharan countries. These manufacturing firms are from seven different industries- Food, Textiles, Garment, Chemicals, Non-Metallic and Basic Metals, Fabricated Metals and Machinery, and Wood and Furniture. These relationships are less known in the context of Sub-Saharan African economies given the challenges for many countries in the region to build adequate infrastructure. The results shed lights on the importance of specific infrastructure in a particular industry. The last essay focused on the quality of trunk (major) roads and agricultural yield in Tanzania. Given the poor quality of roads in Sub-Saharan Africa, this essay tries to evaluate the impacts of recently rehabilitated trunk roads (2,500 Km) on agriculture yield in Tanzania- a country whose economy is largely based on agriculture led by small agricultural households.
Social-cultural impacts of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor on the well-being of local community
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2020) Sun, Yunpeng; Ghani, Usman; Hameed Pitafi, Abdul; Islam, Tahir
In this research, the impact of infrastructure improvement as a result of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative on the well-being and quality of life (QOL) of residents has been studied. Using the primary data collected from the local population of the Baluchistan province of Pakistan, a link between the socio-cultural effects of CPEC development and the subjective well-being of local citizens has been established. A total of 495 relevant responses were used to assess the well-being of the population through structural equation modeling. Results have shown that the social, cultural, and educational benefits of local communities are significant predictors of the well-being of citizens, and QOL issues have shown to have a major impact on the well-being of citizens. However, findings have also shown that the community resource has an important link with the subjective well-being of citizens. Furthermore, the results also give the local community perceptions of the CPEC initiative; hence the officials of the province can use the findings of this study to create prospective approaches based on the local community perceptions toward better exploitation of CPEC as an opportunity.
A Tale of the Digital: Governing China with Data Infrastructure
(2023-06) Liu, Kevin
This dissertation is about how data technologies become an “infrastructure of governing” in contemporary China’s pursuit of socialist modernity. The research is situated in China’s current endeavor of utilizing “New Infrastructure” for national governance, and of achieving an enhancement of the state’s governing capacity through digital technologies. It describes the “structure of feeling” of digital governance, which I argue is emerging as a new Chinese governmentality. The research critically contextualizes today’s digital endeavor within China’s modernization history, and with detailed case studies focusing on one of China’s eight National Data Hubs—Guizhou Hub, it reveals how data technology has become and is still becoming an infrastructure for the Chinese state’s governance of its people and the Chinese people’s understanding of their everyday lives. I argue that through what I call “state-commercial complexes” and “infrastructure of feeling,” data technologies become the undergirding networks of power that sustain a mode of digital governance. The research combines theoretical interventions of infrastructure studies, governmentality, and media studies. It provides “thick descriptions” of the political-economic arrangements, local institutional formations, and complex interactions among the central/local government, stateowned-enterprises, as well as domestic and international corporations in the process of Guizhou Hub’s emergence; It also unearths how these formations involve particularities of local, ordinary people as they live through the landscape cultural-scape transformation of Guizhou’s development of data centers and data technologies, and how these, in turn, produce contingent outcomes that shape and re-configure how data technologies are localized. With an interdisciplinary approach that combines historical, political economy, cultural and ethnographic analysis, this research showcases how national strategy and digital technologies are institutionalized and normalized on regional and local levels and thus become a symbiotic part of the local power network. It argues that we are witnessing the emergence of a new Chinese governmentality that—with datafication and dataismrevitalizes the socialist rationality of seeking full access to its governing subject. However, the localization of digital governance rationality is challenged by the very processes of its own implementation, as the infrastructurizing of data technologies inevitably involves contingent processes of localization where anti-hegemonic forces emerge.
Transportation and the Economy: Assessing Traffic-Generating Activity in the U.S. and Minnesota
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 1994-05-18) Maki, Wilbur
The transportation policy perspective in this report starts with measures of the importance of transportation in the U.S. economy. First, it presents estimates of the total spending--private and public--for transportation and all its service modes. It briefly examines the underlying assumptions about personal consumption , government expenditures, business investment , foreign exports and imports, labor productivity , labor force participation and population growth for each of three scenarios of the U.S . economy in 200_0 and 2005. The 1988 and 1990 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the 1988 U.S. Office of Business Economics Regional Series (OBERS) projection series serve as the baseline scenario. High and low economic activity scenarios are constructed that differ from the baseline scenario in their transportation requirements. The overall report series, of which this report is a part, presents the state and regional baseline series corresponding to the U.S. baseline series. An initial focus of the study is the preparation of an economic framework for relating the transportation requirements of individual state and regional economies to the tasks of state and regional transportation systems policy and planning. The overall study provides estimates of individual state and regional implications of the several U.S. scenarios.
Urban Agriculture And Resiliency Of At-Risk Communities: Evaluation And Implementation At The University Of Minnesota Golf Course
(2020-08) Lampe, Mitchell
Recent light on infrastructural shortcomings during the COVID-19 pandemic and civil uprising against racial disparity has shown signs of a nationwide paradigm shift in more than just politics. Cities, and more specifically, Minneapolis, grew out of a created dichotomy between material infrastructure and the sociocultural realm (Bishop et al., 121). Outdated urban networks of both the physical and immaterial in urban environments have reached a tipping point where their supposed designers and regulators of operation are being opposed for the lack of common good in mind. This study examines what the creation and use of sustainable urban agriculture at the University of Minnesota Golf Course would propagate as means of infrastructural change both physically and socially for the oppressed and exploited communities of Minneapolis, and more specifically Lauderdale. Recent precedents of urban infrastructural failures as well as successful urban agricultural systems and modes of connectivity will be analyzed to support the hypothesis that urban agriculture can be a means to increase resiliency of at-risk urban communities and the morphing of a new paradigm in city infrastructure.

University Digital Conservancy

Browse by Subject

Browsing by Subject "Infrastructure"