Systems of provision (SoP) is an approach to studying consumption that recognises the social and economic organisation of the delivery of goods and services. Essentially, it is a holistic approach that situates the analysis of consumption in relation to processes of production, distribution, and retail. Moreover, it places consumption in historical context and provides a useful way of thinking through changes in consumption patterns and, more broadly, socio-economic change. It is most readily associated with the work of Ben Fine and was initially developed in The World of Consumption (1993), written in conjunction with Ellen Leopold.

Early published research adopted SoP in different contexts, such as infrastructure. Infrastructure provision is usually assessed with the economic and financial methods that generate quantitative indicators such as the NPV, IRR, Pay Back time etc. Infrastructure provision is also assessed with cost-benefit analysis, which integrates the previous indicators with other indicators like the social value (e.g. job position created) and environmental value (E.g. tons of CO2 saved). The indicators of SoP include some of those mentioned above but are integrated with indicators focused on the consumers.

This dissertation aims to collect and systematically organise the indicators from these approaches in the context of infrastructure. Such indicators should be clustered from, e.g. the perspective of the stakeholder’s interest (e.g. investors vs. consumers), time-horizon (e.g. short term, long term) etc. An application, to e.g. an infrastructure like a new subway in Milan, is envisaged but not essential.

This dissertation will be co-supervised by Dr Benito Mignacca from the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio (Italy). Dr Mignacca is a Research Fellow in Economic and Managerial Engineering. He obtained his PhD at the University of Leeds (UK) in 2021, where he received the 2021 School of Civil Engineering Postgraduate Award in recognition of his academic performance. Before joining the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio in 2022, he worked as Research Fellow in “Energy Storage Economics and Finance” at the University of Leeds, where he supervised several Master’s students for their dissertations. He co-authored >10 peer-reviewed publications about large infrastructure, and he attracted >60000€ in research funding related to large infrastructure.