Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 6
Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Infrastructure
Projects
V. Ratna Reddy and Mathew Kurian
1 Introduction
Developing countries are plagued with poor and fluctuating service delivery with
low or no priority for environmental protection. Often these two aspects are in-
terlinked and complement each other in aggravating the problems. The problems
are conspicuous in the case of infrastructure-based basic services like water, sani-
tation, power, health, etc. Main reasons for this include: (1) Lack of attention to
planning and designing; (2) Neglect of source protection investments; (3) Lack of
allocation towards capital or asset management practices; (4) Lack of understanding
regarding the linkages between different sectors like groundwater aquifers, energy
sector; agricultural and household demand for water resources, etc. and (5) Absence
of disaster management preparedness or fund allocations towards such eventualities
(Kurian and Turral
2010
; Reddy and Kurian
2010
).
1
The experience of developing countries clearly indicates that the focus, in terms
of planning, has been on infrastructure provision rather than service delivery.
Investments have been con
ned to the production phase to the neglect of pre- and
post-production phases. It is observed that expenditure on infrastructure accounts
for more than 80 % of the total allocations in rural water supply services (Reddy
et al.
2012
). This is attributed to the fact that the budgeted unit costs of rural
1
For African and Indian experience see WASHCost project publications covering four countries
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