In order to promote the application of noise map in high-speed railway noise management, the high-speed railway noise map drawing technology based on the combination of noise prediction model and geographic information system (GIS) is studied. Firstly, according to the distribution characteristics of noise sources and line structure characteristics of high-speed railway, the prediction model of multi equivalent sound sources and the calculation method of sound barrier insertion loss of high-speed railway are optimized; secondly, a three-dimensional geographic information model of a high-speed railway is built in GIS software, and the railway noise prediction technology based on the model is developed again; then, the noise of discrete nodes is calculated, and the continuous noise distribution map is drawn by spatial interpolation. The research results show that the comparison error between the noise map of a high-speed railway drawn by this technology and the measured results is less than 1 dB (A), which verifies the accuracy and practicality of the high-speed railway noise map, and can be used as a reference for the railway noise management department to formulate noise control countermeasures.

The propagation of plant material in the arracacha crop is commonly done vegetatively through asexual seed, this activity has allowed its multiplication and conservation over time. The plant material available is of low quality, affecting the development and potential yield of the crop and therefore the producer’s income. The objective of the research was to comparatively analyze two technologies for the production of arracacha seed: local technology and Agrosavia technology. The information for the local technology was obtained from surveys applied to farmers and the selection was made using the deterministic sampling technique, and for the Agrosavia technology through the recording of data and production costs in research lots at commercial scale. Descriptive statistics and calculation of economic return indicators were applied for the two situations. The results show that the use of quality seed allows obtaining higher seed production (251,559 unit ha^-1) and tuberous roots (25,875 kg ha^-1), being superior to local technology by 14% and 28% respectively; thus, the arracacha producer acquires greater economic efficiency by obtaining lower unit cost per kilo produced and better net income with a marginal rate of return of 316.45. The results achieved are useful for farmers, companies and entities that wish to produce quality seed and support the arracacha production system in Colombia.

The purpose of this article is to determine the equitability of airport and university allocations throughout Ethiopian regional states based on the number of airports and institutions per 1 million people. According to the sample, the majority of respondents believed that university allocation in Ethiopia is equitable. In contrast, the majority of respondents who were asked about airports stated that there is an uneven distribution of airports across Ethiopia’s regional states. Hence, both interviewees and focus group discussants stated that there is a lack of equitable distribution of universities and airports across Ethiopia’s regional states. This paper contributes a lesson on how to create a comprehensive set of determining factors for equitable infrastructure allocation. It also provides a methodological improvement for assessing infrastructure equity and other broader implications across Ethiopian regional states.

This paper contributes to a long-standing debate in development practice: under what conditions can externally established participatory groups engage in the collective management of services beyond the life of a project? Using 10 years of panel data on water point functionality from Indonesia’s rural water program, the Program for Community-Based Water Supply and Sanitation, the paper explored the determinants of subnational variation in infrastructure sustainability. It then investigated positive and negative deviance cases to answer why some communities successfully engaged in system management despite being located in difficult conditions as per quantitative findings and vice versa. The findings show that differences in the implementation of community participation, driven by local social relations between frontline service providers, that is, village authorities and water user groups, explain sustainable management. This initial condition of state-society relations influences how the project is initiated, kicking off negative or positive reinforcing pathways, leading to community collective action or exit. The paper concludes that the relationships between frontline government representatives and community actors are important and are an underexamined aspect of the ability of external projects to generate successful community-led management of public goods.