Editorial - Special issue: Recent Advances in Complex and Large-Scale Project Analysis and Evaluation

This special issue collects a selection of papers that focus on different aspects related to the analysis and evaluation of complex and large scale infrastructure projects. Infrastructure includes highly heterogeneous assets whose main tasks are to provide public services and/or public goods to industry and households. The most common infrastructure assets are (Rietveld and Bruinsma, 1996; Grimsey, 2002): highways and roads, rails, bridges and tunnels, parking facilities, mass-transit and airport facilities, seaports, education buildings, electricity, gas and water supply facilities and distribution systems, waste treatment facilities, broadcast and wireless towers, telecommunication, cable networks, satellite networks, courthouses, hospitals, schools, correction facilities, stadiums, and subsidised houses. Both scholars and policy-makers recognise that infrastructure investment is an important lever to stimulate economic development and growth. Indeed, infrastructure projects boost employment by creating new jobs and a highly dispersed construction and manufacturing economic activity, generating a considerable multiplier effect in a country economy. Further, infrastructure investments may help to gain business productivity (i.e., saving costs and/or increasing production amount) and remove barriers that hamper or impede development (Ahmed and Donovan, 1992). Public investment in infrastructure assets represents an important part of the European Union convergent strategy.