[IN PRINCIPLE THIS CAN BE DEVELOPED EITHER AS THESIS OR A DISSERTATION. HOWEVER MORE LIKELY WILL BE A DISSERTATION]

The most common methods for infrastructure project appraisal are Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) and Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). The DCF is often used by an organisation looking for a return on investment, while the CBA is often used by a long-term owner without a focus on the return on the investment. For instance, in the case of a new multi-million building public university, the private construction company looks at DCF, while the University governance looks at CBA.

Both DCF and CBA have limitations. In order to overcome such limitations, a novel method has been proposed for infrastructure planning: the “System of Provision” (SoP).

The ultimate aim of this dissertation is to compare the SoP with the DCF and the CBA (ideally with a fictional case study). Relevant questions that the candidate might answer are:

1. Which are the main assumptions of these three approaches?
2. Which are the inputs of these three approaches? Which are the outputs?
3. Are there some mentionable examples of the SoP applied to infrastructure projects? How is it applied?
4. Which stakeholders does (or should) SoP take into account?
5. How can we account for the value brought by an infrastructure project using the SoP approach?

Given an ideal project (e.g. a new building for the university), which are the main differences between the output(s) of the SoP model and the other methods? Pros and cons?

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.