The PPP scholarly work has effectively explored the material values attached to PPPs such as efficiency of services, value for money and productivity, but little attention has been paid to procedural public values. This paper aims to address this gap by exploring how Enfidha Airport in Tunisia failed to achieve both financial and procedural values that were expected from delivering the airport via the PPP route, and what coping strategies the public and private sectors deployed to ameliorate any resultant value conflicts. Based on the analysis of Enfidha Airport, it is argued that PPP projects are likely to fail to deliver financial and procedural values when the broader institutional context is not supportive of PPP arrangements, and when political and security risks are not adequately counted for during the bidding process.

With the increasing demand for sustainable energy, advanced characterization methods are becoming more and more important in the field of energy materials research. With the help of X-ray imaging technology, we can obtain the morphology, structure and stress change information of energy materials in real time from two-dimensional and three-dimensional perspectives. In addition, with the help of high penetration X-ray and high brightness synchrotron radiation source, in-situ experiments are designed to obtain the qualitative and quantitative change information of samples during the charge and discharge process. In this paper, X-ray imaging technology based on synchrotron and its related applications are reviewed. The applications of several main X-ray imaging technologies in the field of energy materials, including X-ray projection imaging, transmission X-ray microscopy, scanning transmission X-ray microscopy, X-ray fluorescence microscopy and coherent diffraction imaging, are discussed. The application prospects and development directions of X-ray imaging in the future are prospected.

Spectrum map is the foundation of spectrum resource management, security governance and spectrum warfare. Aiming at the problem that the traditional spectrum mapping is limited to two-dimensional space, a three-dimensional spectrum data acquisition and mapping system architecture for the integration of space, sky and earth is presented, and a spectrum map reconstruction scheme driven by propagation model is proposed, which can achieve high-precision three-dimensional spectrum map rendering under the condition of sparse sampling. The spectrum map reconstructed by this method in the case of single radiation source and multiple radiation sources is in good agreement with the theoretical results based on ray tracing method. In addition, the measured results of typical scenes further verify the feasibility of this method.

COVID-19 and the economic response have amplified and changed the nature of development challenges in fundamental ways. Global development cooperation should adapt accordingly. This paper lays out the urgency for new methods of development cooperation that can deliver resource transfers at scale, oriented to addressing climate change and with transparency and better governance. It looks at what is actually happening to major donor countries’ development cooperation programs and where the principal gaps lie, and offers some thoughts on how to move forward, notwithstanding the clear geopolitical rivalries that are evident.
The most immediate challenge is to provide a level of liquidity support to countries ravaged by the global economic downturn. Many developing countries will see double-digit declines in GDP, with some recording downturns not seen in peacetime. Alongside the short-term challenge of recovery, COVID-19 has laid bare longer-term trends that have pointed for some time to the lack of sustainability—environmental, social, and governance—in the way economic development was occurring in many places, including in advanced economies. This new landscape has significant implications for development cooperation in terms of scale, development/climate co-benefits, and transparency and accountability.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) can be an effective way of delivering infrastructure. However, achieving value for money can be difficult if government agencies are not equipped to manage them effectively. Experience from OECD countries shows that the availability of finance is not the main obstacle in delivering infrastructure. Governance—effective decision-making—is the most influential aspect on the quality of an investment, including PPP investments. In 2012, the OECD together with its member countries developed principles to ensure that PPPs deliver value for money transparently and prudently, supported by the right institutional capacities and processes to harness the upside of PPPs without jeopardizing fiscal sustainability. Survey results from OECD countries show that some dimensions of the recommended practices are well applied and past and ongoing reforms show progress. However, other principles have not been well implemented, reflecting the continuing need for improving public governance of PPPs across countries.