Abstract

The Tool for Rapid Assessment of City Energy (TRACE) is used for conducting rapid assessments of energy use in cities. It helps prioritize sectors with significant energy savings potential, and identifies appropriate energy efficiency interventions across six sectors-transport, municipal buildings, water and waste water, public lighting, solid waste, and power and heat. It is a simple, low-cost, user-friendly, and practical tool that can be applied in any socioeconomic setting. While this work focuses on the growth poles in Romania, the analysis was limited to the boundary of the center city of Brasov, due to the difficulty of collecting individual indicators for all the constituent localities of a metropolitan area. The report details the analysis carried out and the recommendations derived as a result, for district heating maintenance and upgrade, non-motorized transport, public transport development, parking restraint measures, municipal buildings audit and retrofit, street lighting timing program, and active leakage of water and pressure management. Document type: Book

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide feedback on the question of socioeconomic benefits from rural road development and the impact of transport infrastructure on the poor, particularly the poorest and the bottom 20 percent of the population. This paper relies on impact evaluation methodologies, which are traditionally used in social sectors but less so in the transport sector. The study, including first surveys, was launched in 2003 under the Tocantins Sustainable Regional Development Project. The paper highlights the context that led to the project’s design, which included an impact evaluation of the works envisaged under the project. The paper also highlights some of the main challenges faced by this impact evaluation and how these challenges were addressed for the present study. It then provides details about the data collected during the surveys and the key relevant characteristics of the population targeted by the surveys. It discusses the possible estimation methods envisioned to undertake the study and provides the main results of the assessment based on these methods. The analysis shows that improved rural roads changed people’s transport modal choice. People used more public buses and individual motorized vehicles after the rural road improvements. The paper also finds that the project increased school attendance, particularly for girls. Although the evidence is relatively weak in statistical terms, it indicates that the project contributed to increasing agricultural jobs and household income in certain regions. Document type: Book

Abstract

The main impetus for this report (and for the reports prepared for the other six growth poles) is a request received from the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration. The request came within the context of on-going preparations for the 2014-2020 programming period, with energy efficiency being one the major themes of the Europe 2020 strategy, and a critical priority for all EU member countries. Within Romania, local authorities that will want to access energy efficiency funds under the 2014-2020 Regional Operational Program will need to first prepare energy efficiency strategies. The TRACE tool is specifically targeted at local authorities, and is a good instrument for drafting such strategies after the 1989 Revolution; Romania began its transition from a centralized system to a market-run economy. Today the country is a member of the European Union (EU) and NATO. After more than a decade of economic restructuring and political change, the country has taken significant steps to catch up with the economic performance of more developed EU countries. Although radical reforms brought about significant changes, the standard of living of Romanians is still behind the EU average. Cluj-Napoca (Cluj) is one of cities where such disparities are less pronounced, as the region is more developed and prosperous than most regions in the country. Cluj has developed quite well in the past few years, and it has become one of the most flourishing cities in the country, having a good growing potential. At present, the city is an important economic center, home to several local brands that have become famous nationwide as well as in Europe. Moreover, Cluj is known today as the 'capital' of the IT sector in the country, due to an aggressive expansion of this field in recent years. Document type: Book

Abstract

part of a long-term partnership between the World Bank and Brazil, the Federal Government of Brazil sought the World Bank’s assistance to review road safety management capacity in Brazil, building both on past experiences in the country and international best practices. This National Road Safety Management Capacity Review, therefore, was prepared by the World Bank, with the support of the Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF). The primary objective of the review is to evaluate the multi-sectoral capacity of road safety management in Brazil, identifying possible road safety challenges and presenting recommendations to address these challenges. The methodology of the review, in accordance with the guidelines of the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility, focused on examinations of key functional aspects of road safety, including institutions, legislation, financing, information, and capacities at all levels of government and among non-government actors. The review was prepared mainly based on interviews of key road safety stakeholders at the federal, state, and municipal levels, members of parliament, NGOs, and the private sector, in addition to direct inspection of roads and on-road behaviors, and the analysis of published research and reports on road safety. In addition, information and understanding gained from previous reviews of the states of São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, and Bahia were also incorporated.

Abstract

part of efforts to curb road deaths and serious injuries, the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) invited the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) to work with the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (Departamento Nacional de Infraestrutura de Transportes, DNIT) to assess the safety of Brazilian roads. During this second assessment of Brazilian roads, approximately 3,400km of roads were assessed. This technical report describes the road assessment project and includes details on data collection, the methodology used and a summary of the results. The infrastructure-related risk assessment involved detailed surveys and coding of 50 road attributes at 100 meter intervals along the network and creation of Star Ratings, which provide a simple and objective measure showing the level of risk on the road network. The star ratings show that 1 percent of road length is rated as 5-star, 9 percent is rated as 4-star, 58 percent is rated as 3-star, and the remaining 32 percent is rated as 2-star and below for vehicle occupants. For motorcyclists, no roads were rated as 5-star, only 3 percent of road length is rated as 4-star, 47 percent is rated as 3-star, and the remaining 50 percent is rated 2-star and below. For pedestrians less than 1 percent is rated as 4-star and 5-star, 2 percent is rated as 3-star and the remaining 13 percent is rated 2-star and below. For bicyclists less than 1 percent is rated as 5-star or 4-star, 5 percent is rated as 3-star and the remaining 14 percent is rated 2-star and below. The project also involved the creation of a Safer Roads Investment Plans, which draws on more than 90 proven road safety treatments, ranging from low cost road markings and pedestrian refuges to higher cost intersection upgrades and full highway duplication.

Abstract

This report, supported by the energy sector management assistance program (ESMAP), applies the tool for the rapid assessment of city energy (TRACE) to examine energy use in León, México. This study is one of three requested and conducted in 2013 by the World Bank Latin America and the Caribbean energy unit to begin a dialogue on energy efficiency (EE) potential in Latin America and Caribbean cities. In Puebla and León, TRACE helped the Mexican Secretary of Energy (SENER) develop an urban EE strategy. TRACE is a simple, practical tool for making rapid assessments of municipal energy use. It helps prioritize sectors that have the potential to save significant amounts of energy and identifies appropriate EE measures in six sectors - transport, municipal buildings, wastewater, streetlights, solid waste, and power and heat. Globally, the six are often managed by the cities which have substantial influence over public utility services. The study looked at six areas to determine the three that have the greatest savings potential and where the city has a significant degree of control: streetlights, solid waste, and municipal buildings.

Abstract

Rapid urbanization in Ghana over the past three decades has coincided with rapid GDP growth. This has helped to create jobs, increase human capital, decrease poverty, and expand opportunities and improve living conditions for millions of Ghanaians. Ghana’s urban transformation has been momentous, but it is not unique: a similar process has characterized other countries at similar levels of development. Ghana’s key challenge now is to ensure that urbanization continues to complement growth through improvements in productivity and inclusion, rather than detracting from these goals. Many rising problems are related to efficiency and inclusion: these include slums, lack of basic services, underdeveloped manufacturing, and insufficient transport infrastructure.

Abstract

The main objective of the project PROLOGUE (PROmoting real Life Observations for Gaining Understanding of road user behaviour in Europe) is to explore the feasibility and usefulness of a large-scale European naturalistic driving observation study. The work described in this deliverable focused on the feasibility of using and combining two observation methods, site-based observation and in-vehicle observation, for naturalistic driving analysis. In this study the strengths and weaknesses of each method were analyzed and the differences between measures that were calculated by both methods were compared to consider the combined results. The two different observation methods studied the interaction between car drivers turning right and cyclists going straight at an intersection, which was equipped with cameras. For the site-based study one camera was used that had a bird’s eye view on the intersection. The video data were processed manually and automatically. The results of the two ways of analysis were compared. The instrumented cars were equipped with a data acquisition system (DAS) and sensors including a GPS logger and a camera. The results of the site-based observations showed that the manual processing seemed to be more accurate than the automatic processing. However, the processing time was much larger for manual analysis. Having a top view camera or more cameras with different viewpoints could improve the accuracy of automatic processing by providing the ability to detect the sizes of the road users and therefore the road user type. The in-vehicle measurement showed that drivers show different driving behaviour when making the right turn manoeuvre from a halted situation compared to a non-halted situation. This implies that drivers adapt their behaviour and compensate for the more dangerous situation by driving slower and looking more often. The results of the speed measure comparison between the site-based and in-vehicle study showed that the average speeds for both studies were similar. However, the speed profile that was measured in the in-vehicle study was less smooth than the speed pattern that was derived in the site-based study. This is explained by the noisy GPS signal on which the in-vehicle speeds are based. The value of combining the two observation methods is twofold. At first it offers the opportunity to enrich the information from one study with complementary observations from the other study. Secondly, it offers the opportunity to validate measures from the individual studies. This study showed that each type of study has its unique values. From in-vehicle data it is possible to look in detail at the driving behaviour of the participants over time and in different natural situations. The video data allows looking over the shoulder of the driver and observer where drivers are looking or what they are paying attention to. By analyzing their glancing behaviour, we know when and how often drivers look at other vulnerable road users to estimate their position and speed and to be able to anticipate. For a future large scale naturalistic driving study it could be valuable to add a number of sites with site-based observation. Two main areas are identified that would benefit from these complementary observations. One research area is when studying the interaction between drivers and vulnerable road users. Another research area that would benefit from the complementary observations is research questions related to infrastructure – as these are by nature related to a specific site like an intersection, a lane merge or a roundabout. The site-based observation allows to observe the traffic flow, the in-vehicle observation could add (for the overlapping cases) information on looking behaviour or other in-vehicle behaviours as well as additional vehicle data like accelerations.