Ph.D. Thesis Defense Announcement

Sustainable Infrastructure Finance: Enhancing Transportation Construction Expenditure Management and Exploring Innovative Financing Mechanisms

by

Yunping Liang

Advisor(s):

Dr. Baabak Ashuri (CEE/BC)

Committee Members:

Dr. Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy (CEE), Dr. Iris Tien (CEE), Dr. Daniel Castro-Lacouture (BC), Dr. Seyed Mohsen Shahandashti (CE, University of Texas at Arlington)

Date & Time: July 21, 2021, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM (EST)

Location: MS Teams link

Infrastructure is vital to the daily life of every single person. Persistent failure to invest in the aging infrastructure of the United States severely jeopardizes this country: the cumulative documented investment gap in the U.S. infrastructure system is more than $2.6 trillion by 2029, leading to more than $10.3 trillion loss in GDP by 2039. The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) worsens the situations by shrinking the limited revenue sources. In addition to the rehabilitation of decaying facilities, intensive investment needs in the wake of emerging consensus on constructing sustainable infrastructures due to the challenges such as climate change, urbanization, and the rapid pace of technological advancement, bring additional pressure to infrastructure finance. In addition to financing sustainable infrastructure, people need to finance infrastructure sustainably. This thesis describes three studies. In the first study, a novel real options model is developed to quantify the risk of cash flow shortage caused by technical uncertainties and market uncertainties in transportation public-private partnerships (P3). In the second study, a new forecasting model which enables reasonably accurate prediction of expenditure cash flow of transportation design-build projects is developed, based on case-based reasoning and genetic algorithm. The third is a conceptual study which identifies the challenges and enabling features of small and medium infrastructure P3. The study reveals the potentials of small and medium P3 as supplements of existing financing methods in terms of meeting ever increasingly complex social needs. The first two studies use advanced analytics methods to enable effective use of limited public transportation funding, and to enhance the robustness of
transportation project finance by improved risk assessment. The last study identifies and analyzes a novel infrastructure finance mechanism that has potential to enlarge funding sources for sustainable infrastructure construction.