Report

A Sustainable Asset Valuation of a Road Infrastructure Project in Queensland, Australia

This report describes how road authorities can expand traditional cost-benefit analysis for road betterment projects. A customized Sustainable Asset Valuation tool was developed for the Queensland Road Authority to expand traditional cost-benefit analysis by including direct and indirect economic, environmental, and social outcomes of road betterment projects. The report describes how this tool can be used to assess past and future investments in road infrastructure.

By Andrea Bassi, Marco Guzzetti, Morten Siersted, Liesbeth Casier on April 18, 2023

The customized Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) tool for the Queensland Road Authority considers a wide range of benefits, using 15 indicators that include road disruption, access to services, market access, and pollution. The Excel-based tool supports the development of an economic analysis and an estimation of the internal rate of return (IRR), net present value (NPV) and benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) that consider the economic valuation of several social, economic and environmental non-road benefits. We find that the indirect induced social and environmental outcomes of road resilience investments provide significant economic contributions that should be taken into account in the economic and financial analysis of road infrastructure investments. The report describes how this can be done.