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This study employs multimodel simulations, including road traffic, process, and system dynamics modeling, to analyze hydrogen refueling stations (HRSs) in the Gulf–Europe corridor, also known as the Iraq’s development road project (DRP). It focuses on operational requirements, which consist of stock levels and infrastructure needs, along with refueling performance under stochastic vehicle inflows (SVIs) from the Gulf, European countries, and Iraq’s side roads (SRs). The research aims to identify key operational requirements and evaluate the refueling performance of an HRS for various stochastic vehicle inflow (SVI) scenarios, facilitating the efficient integration of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) into freight networks. The study introduces novel multimodel simulations developed in the AnyLogic software environment to replicate real‐world variability in vehicle inflows. Key findings reveal that SVIs significantly impact hydrogen stock level (HSL), infrastructure requirements (IRs), and refueling performance metrics (RPMs). For example, for a daily transportation demand of 30,000 tons of goods with 10%–20% side road (SR) vehicle entries, an HRS requires an IR‐1 of 3, an IR‐2 of 2, and an HSL of 44,391.6 kg, with performance reflected in refueling performance metric (RPM)‐1 values of 73%, 72%, and 45%, and an RPM‐2 range of 1.32–6.12 min. This proves that the HRS requirements and performance vary with SVIs for different transportation demands. Hence, we enhance the theoretical framework of refueling station design by integrating multimodel simulations to address stochastic inflows. It offers actionable insights for policymakers on optimizing HRS operations, improving scalability, and achieving United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The Gulf-Europe transportation project, also known as Iraq’s Development Road Project (DRP), is a transformative supply chain initiative aimed at constructing a corridor from Al Faw Port in Iraq to Turkey, linking Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries with Europe. The project’s goal is to establish a robust transport corridor through the extensive construction of roads and railways, facilitating the fast and seamless movement of goods between the East and the West. By creating land-based direct transportation routes to complement traditional maritime pathways, the project seeks to reduce transit times, lower shipping costs, increase trade flows, and improve regional integration. This study qualitatively examines how the corridor will impact trade, the economy, and transportation sustainability in the Gulf nations. We explore potential increases in trade volumes, foreign investments, logistics sustainability, and economic diversification within the region. Additionally, we recommend the adoption of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) and hydrogen-powered trains in the corridor to align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Furthermore, we suggest that the corridor’s development will create opportunities for economic diversification and reduce the GCC countries' reliance on oil revenues. Finally, the study provides strategic recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders to maximize the project’s benefits and address potential challenges, emphasizing its potential to drive long-term economic growth and strengthen the GCC countries’ global trade positioning.

Ethnic favoritism is seen as antithetical to development. This paper provides credible quantification of the extent of ethnic favoritism using data on road building in Kenyan districts across the 1963-2011 period. Guided by a model, it then examines whether the transition in and out of democracy under the same president constrains or exacerbates ethnic favoritism. Across the post-independence period, we find strong evidence of ethnic favoritism: districts that share the ethnicity of the president receive twice as much expenditure on roads and have five times the length of paved roads built. This favoritism disappears during periods of democracy.

Extreme climate change is an existential threat to humanity and infrastructure development. At the same time, the construction and operation of carbon-intense public–private partnership (PPP) infrastructure such as road transport, water, public houses, energy supply and sanitation unleash most of the greenhouse gas emissions that impacts negatively on the climate. Increasingly, there is a heightened interests in the development and financing of climate-smart PPP solutions to promote resilient and sustainable public infrastructures. Therefore, this article aims at identifying the critical solutions to the provision of climate-smart PPP infrastructure projects together with the driving factors and challenges of its implementation in public facilities. The paper utilized a systematic literature review method where data were sourced from prominent academic databases of Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and PubMed. The outcomes of the review demonstrate that the adoption of climate finance, renewable energy, and maintaining resilient infrastructures are prominent solutions to attain low-carbon infrastructure development. Key drivers such as the global call to reduce huge emissions from construction projects and transition to sustainable green construction management account for the shift toward climate-smart PPP projects. The barriers identified include poor and unconcerted practice and policy directions to resolve emission problems in the construction industry. The outcomes of this article provide incentives for the development and management of climate-smart public projects. Researchers can harness the results to investigate and develop adaptation and mitigation strategies for low-carbon PPP projects.

Georeferenced information on road infrastructure is essential for spatial planning, socio-economic assessments and environmental impact analyses. Yet current global road maps are typically outdated or characterized by spatial bias in coverage. In the Global Roads Inventory Project we gathered, harmonized and integrated nearly 60 geospatial datasets on road infrastructure into a global roads dataset. The resulting dataset covers 222 countries and includes over 21 million km of roads, which is two to three times the total length in the currently best available country-based global roads datasets. We then related total road length per country to country area, population density, GDP and OECD membership, resulting in a regression model with adjusted R2 of 0.90, and found that that the highest road densities are associated with densely populated and wealthier countries. Applying our regression model to future population densities and GDP estimates from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios, we obtained a tentative estimate of 3.0-4.7 million km additional road length for the year 2050. Large increases in road length were projected for developing nations in some of the world's last remaining wilderness areas, such as the Amazon, the Congo basin and New Guinea. This highlights the need for accurate spatial road datasets to underpin strategic spatial planning in order to reduce the impacts of roads in remaining pristine ecosystems.

Roads represent a threat to biodiversity, primarily through increased mortality from collisions with vehicles. Although estimating roadkill rates is an important first step, how roads affect long-term population persistence must also be assessed. We developed a trait-based model to predict roadkill rates for terrestrial bird and mammalian species in Europe and used a generalized population model to estimate their long-term vulnerability to road mortality. We found that ~194 million birds and ~29 million mammals may be killed each year on European roads. The species that were predicted to experience the highest mortality rates due to roads were not necessarily the same as those whose long-term persistence was most vulnerable to road mortality. When evaluating which species or areas could be most affected by road development projects, failure to consider how roadkill affects populations may result in misidentifying appropriate targets for mitigation.

Despite delays, infrastructure development is crucial for socio-economic development and economic growth. Identifying and managing these delays increases project quality, reduces conflicts and risks, and ultimately contributes to overall development. This study summarizes the variables influencing the delay of the Woliso–Ambo Road construction project via multiple regression analysis and questionnaire surveys. With an emphasis on the Woliso–Ambo Road construction project, this paper sought to identify and examine several factors contributing to road construction delays. The data were collected from important project participants, such as project managers, engineers, contractors, and government representatives, via a questionnaire survey and unstructured interviews in addition to secondary documents. The associations between various parameters and project delays were then evaluated via multiple regression analysis of the data obtained from the questionnaire survey. The investigation considered several concerns, including escalation of material price influence, delays in the subcontractor work influence, material and equipment influence, inadequate management and supervision by consultants, and peace and security situations. The study findings showed that the Woliso–Ambo Road construction project had delays, mainly due to the increase in material price and material influence and equipment influence. The beta value of the regression reflects the direct relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The Multiple Regression model performed a strong R-value of 0.893 and an adjusted R-square of 0.797, indicating that the selected factors explained 79% of the variation in road construction delays. The results emphasize the importance of efficient planning and project management techniques to ensure the timely completion of road construction projects. The time overrun 97.4%, cost overrun 85.6%, financial loss 76.7%, company reputation 70.4%, poor quality of work 69.01%, contract relocation 65.7%, and poor quality 60.3% are the outcomes of the delays in the project areas. This study provides insightful information on the causes of delays in road construction projects and suggestions for improving project performance.

Infrastructure investment may reshape economic activities. In this article, I examine the distributional impacts of high-speed rail upgrades in China, which have improved passengers’ access to high-speed train services in the city nodes but have left the peripheral counties along the upgraded railway lines bypassed by the services. By exploiting the quasi-experimental variation in whether counties were affected by this project, my analysis suggests that the affected counties on the upgraded railway lines experienced reductions in GDP and GDP per capita following the upgrade, which was largely driven by the concurrent drop in fixed asset investments. This article provides the first empirical evidence on how transportation costs of people affect urban peripheral patterns.

The Chinese Government commenced the One Belt One Road (OBOR) project in 2013 for the multidimensional development to restore the historical Silk Road paradigms. The Economic Corridor provides networks and connections based on two geographical territories. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is one of them, a chunk of the Silk Road Economic Belt’s economic corridors. CPEC would be an economic game-changer for Pakistan. It will generate businesses, minimize poverty, generate employment opportunities, and improve local communities’ health and education. However, it is more lucrative for the Chinese economy because CPEC is a safe, cheapest, and shortest route for importing energy rather than other routes. The present study investigates the social, infrastructural, and tourism effects of CPEC through the mediation role of rural development and knowledge sharing, including income, employment, business, land-use change variables, and CPEC adoptability for a local community in Pakistan. This study is based on four different regions of Gilgit Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh in Pakistan. The study incorporates the collected data from the respondents living on the CPEC routes via face-to-face interviews from citizens (cities, villages, and towns). Besides, the study applied univariate and Structural Equation Model techniques to draw the results. The study results reveal that CPEC plays a significant role in Pakistan’s socio-economic and rural development. This mega project’s expectations might bring positive changes in infrastructure development, energy sector, and social development projects in Pakistan. The Results also indicated that CPEC would link rural areas to urban areas, which would offer development opportunities for rural regions to achieve sustainable development.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is closely linked to the ecological sustainability of the infrastructure ventures that intrinsically include the aspects of climate change and pollution. Though there exists literature on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and pollution haven hypothesis (PHH), very few explore the scope in the light of Belt and Road host countries (B&RCs). Therefore, the study examines the income-induced EKC and Chinese outward foreign direct investment (FDI)-based PHH in the multivariate framework of people’s connectivity and technology innovation in B&RCs from 2003 to 2018. The outcome of the study reveals that the observed relationship is quantile-dependent, which may disclose misleading results in previous studies using traditional methodologies that address the averages. Utilizing the novel “Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR)” of Machado and Silva (J Econom 213:145–173, 2019), the findings confirm an inverted U-shape association between economic growth and CO 2 emissions only at lower to medium emission countries, thus validating the EKC hypothesis. The Chinese outward FDI flows increase carbon emissions at medium to high emission countries, thereby confirming PHH. The findings also indicate that people’s connectivity contributes to increasing emissions while innovation mitigates carbon emissions at lower to medium polluted countries. Moreover, the outcomes of Granger causality confirm one-way causality between economic growth and CO 2 emissions, between FDI and CO 2 emissions, between people’s connectivity and CO 2 emissions, and between innovation and CO 2 emissions. The results offer valuable insight for legislators to counteract CO 2 emissions in B&RCs through innovation-led energy conservation in infrastructure projects while adopting green and sustainable financing mechanisms to materialize mega construction projects under the BRI.