Masters Theses

Akhilesh Ojha

Keywords and Phrases

Bayesian; Economic benefits; Infrastructure investment; Leontief; System dynamics

Abstract

"Investment in rail infrastructure is necessary to maintain existing service and to cater for future growth in freight and passenger services. Many communities have realized the importance of investment in rail infrastructure projects and set up goals and visions to achieve economic development through investing in such projects. Due to limited funds available, communities have to select a single or very few projects from a variety of projects. It is very critical that right projects must be selected at the right time for a community to realize economic development. The limited methods for quantifying the economic benefits to the stakeholders often cause a problem in the selection process. Most of the conventional methods focus mainly on the economic impact of the project and ignore the metrics that convey the economic impacts in meaningful ways to the key stakeholders involved. This leads to uncertainty in the project selection and planning process and often leads to failure in achieving the goals of the project.

This study aims to provide a mathematical framework that quantifies economic benefits of investment in rail infrastructure projects in meaningful ways to the key stakeholders through three different approaches, namely, Leontief-based approach, Bayesian approach and system dynamics approach. The Leontief-based approach is the easiest of all the three approaches provided that historical data is available. Bayesian approach is also very beneficial as it can be used by coupling small data with surveys and interviews. Also, system dynamics model is very useful to conduct qualitative analysis, but the quantitative analysis part can become very complex"--Abstract, page iii.

Advisor(s)

Long, Suzanna, 1961-

Committee Member(s)

Qin, Ruwen
Konur, Dincer

Department(s)

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering

Degree Name

M.S. in Engineering Management

Sponsor(s)

Missouri. Department of Transportation

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Publication Date

Fall 2014

Pagination

ix, 76 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 70-75).

Rights

© 2014 Akhilesh Ojha, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Subject Headings

Infrastructure (Economics)Construction projects -- Economic aspectsTransportationRailroad tracksRailroads -- Maintenance and repair

Thesis Number

T 10590

Electronic OCLC #

902735518

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