Don’t Pass Deferred Maintenance Costs to the Next Generation!: The Effects of Politics on State Highway Maintenance Spending

Routine maintenance spending for public infrastructure is critical for reducing life-cycle costs, and improving asset preservation and quality. Yet, states focus more on building new roads and expansion than maintaining existing assets’ conditions. Deferred maintenance costs are transferred to the future taxpayers, and they will eventually pay the expensive price. So far, there is little academic endeavor to examine the determinants of state and local routine maintenance spending. This study uses a panel data analysis covering 47 states from 1995 to 2009 to examine the effects of politics on state highway routine maintenance spending. The study finds that political incentive and conflict are key factors delaying state highway routine maintenance spending. The re-election-minded governors and legislatures tend to allocate less funding to maintenance to satisfy the current taxpayers. The study further finds that politically-divided states spend less on highway maintenance due to higher transaction costs in the policy-making process.

Provisional and Protective Measures

This chapter focuses on provisional and protective measures, which are important both in domestic and cross-border litigation to secure effective enforcement or to otherwise preserve rights and prevent (further) harm prior to the commencement of proceedings or pending final judgment. Part X of the European Rules of Civil Procedure consists of three Parts: a General Part (Section 1), which includes rules that apply to all types of measures, unless otherwise provided; a Special Part (Section 2), which includes rules on Asset Preservation, Regulatory Measures, Evidence Preservation, and Interim Payments; and a Cross-Border Part (Section 3), which primarily refers to existing legislation. Section 3 further provides a minimal number of general rules as it is not intended to provide a set of rules on the complex and multifaceted issue of cross-border provisional and protective measures. Principle 8 of the ALI/UNIDROIT Principles was the starting point for the development of Rules concerning provisional and protective measures. This Principle includes three basic rules: on function and proportionality (8.1); ex parte measures; (8.2); and compensation and security (8.3).

Framework for Monitoring of Road Agency Performance in Rural Road Asset Management

The Research for Community Access Partnership (ReCAP) is providing technical assistance and capacity building initiatives to foster sustainable improvements in asset management performance in selected rural road agencies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Central to the research methodology is the development of a specification to enable road agencies to assess their performance in asset management as a basis for self-improvement. The specification is based on the development of an objectively determinable “road sector sustainability index” which measures the extent to which six building blocks considered essential for achieving effective road asset preservation are satisfied in practice. Periodic measurements of the condition of the project road networks, coupled with the collection of socioeconomic data, are being used to monitor the trend in road asset value, and to assess the effectiveness of, and improvements in, asset management as well as the impact of road condition on the wellbeing of rural communities. This paper outlines methodologies and tools that have been developed and piloted in four Sub-Saharan African countries to assess and monitor performance in rural road asset management and to achieve improvements over time. It summarizes progress achieved in the first 3 years since the project’s inception. The initial findings of the research indicate that severe institutional, funding, and technical shortcomings exist in the participating countries that preclude sustainable road asset preservation. However, following implementation of the methods summarized here, there is now an increased awareness of the importance of adopting a holistic approach to road asset management using simple and sustainable methods.

Foundations in the wild west: the Wyoming Statutory Foundation Act

Traditionally a civil law concept, the use of foundations as wealth management and succession planning vehicles is gaining popularity in common law jurisdictions. Wyoming is the second state in the USA to adopt common law foundation legislation that will allow for the formation and administration of statutory foundations. The Wyoming Statutory Foundation Act, effective 1 July 2019, combines elements of well-established trust and corporate law in Wyoming with classical elements of foundation legislation found in civil law jurisdictions, while also providing access to Wyoming’s privacy and asset preservation laws.

Asset Preservation During Decommissioning and Commissioning

Operators decommission older offshore oil and gas fields for a variety of reasons: regulations and business models change, technology improves, field productivity ceases. In many cases, the existing pipeline network around these platforms is repurposed or reconfigured to suit current needs. New production wells can be tied in to the existing network, and unproductive assets can be bypassed and decommissioned. Although the platforms are most often specific in purpose, the pipelines are generalists by nature. Prolonging the life of this type of asset is almost always profitable. This paper describes how in-line isolation technology kept production loss to a minimum during offshore platform decommissioning and the tie-in of a reused pipeline into a new facility.

Digitalized preservation and presentation of historical building – taking traditional temples and dougong as examples

The integration of preservation of heritage and the digital technology is an important international trend in the 21st century. The digital technology not only is able to record and preserve detailed documents and information of heritage completely, but also brings the value-added features effectively. In this study, 3D laser scanning is used to perform the digitalized archives for the interior and exterior body work of the building which contains integration of 3D scanner technology, mobile scanning collaboration and multisystem reverse modeling and integration technology. The 3D model is built by combining with multi-media presentations and reversed modeling in real scale to perform the simulation of virtual reality (VR). With interactive teaching and presentation of augmented reality to perform the interaction technology to extend the continuously update in traditional architecture information. With the upgrade of the technology and value-added in digitalization, the cultural asset value can be experienced through 3D virtual reality which makes the information presentation from the traditional reading in the past toward user operation with sensory experience and keep exploring the possibilities and development of cultural asset preservation by using digital technology makes the presentation and learning of cultural asset information toward diversification.

A study of historical preservation learning based on cognitive development theory

The study is to explore how the youth forum activities help the participants establish their concept of property conservation and cognitive development by means of scaffolding instruction. First, the research begins by raising the issues of asset preservation with the establishment of the concept of field; the issues are the content of the scaffolding learning forum. Second, this study uses content analysis to explore the cognitive development and learning performance of the participants during the interactive process. The results show that interactive learning activities can effectively promote all the participants’ cognitive development, on which different backgrounds have little influence. The participants’ cognitive development is mostly concentrated in the application and analysis phase. The results can be used as a reference for future research.