Towards the Mainstreaming of an Approach to Include Social Benefits Within Road Appraisal : A Case Study from Uganda
Developing countries dedicate a considerable share of total infrastructure investment to roads. The adoption in 2000 of the Millennium Development Goals and an increasing emphasis on justifying road investments in terms of their contribution to pov...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/04/9693571/towards-mainstreaming-approach-include-social-benefits-within-road-appraisal-case-study-uganda-towards-mainstreaming-approach-include-social-benefits-within-road-appraisal-case-study-uganda http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17464 |
| Summary: | Developing countries dedicate a
considerable share of total infrastructure investment to
roads. The adoption in 2000 of the Millennium Development
Goals and an increasing emphasis on justifying road
investments in terms of their contribution to poverty
reduction have directed considerable attention to low volume
rural roads. Often the poorest of the poor live in remote
rural areas and improved access to social and economic
services is a key factor in raising their living standards.
The traditional road appraisal frameworks do not fit well
with this trend as they generally ignore the impact of
social benefit and poverty reduction. Past attempts to
overcome these problems have lacked consistency. Therefore,
there is a need to develop a consistent framework to address
the poverty and social benefit aspects in a systematic
manner. A study into the identification and treatment of
social benefits in road transport project appraisal was
conducted in 2003-04. The study highlighted the problems of
identification, separation, measurement, forecasting and
valuation of social benefits within a cost-benefit approach
framework. It recommended a flexible approach using the
principles of multi-criteria analysis (MCA) that is capable
of combining qualitative and quantitative data into a single
analytical framework. One of the study outputs was a
computerized software tool that can be used alone or within
the framework of globally accepted appraisal models.
Although such tools appear to be robust in methodological
terms, there are fundamental operational problems, including
the choice of the benefits costs indicators and their
weights. The current study undertook field testing of the
proposed social benefits model and the software tool to
recommend the choice of indicators with their corresponding
weights based on results from the field. In addition, the
study aimed to improve the capability of the Highway
Development and Management Model (HDM-4) and social benefits
software tools in addressing road investment related social issues. |
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