Evaluating the effectiveness of the stock utilization of transport infrastructure in Vietnam

Vietnam’s good performing economy is characterized by the rehabilitation and modernization of transport infrastructure.This study investigates the material stocks of road network and subsequently evaluates the effectiveness of stock utilization regarding its provided services.

10 Nguyen Thi Cuc

EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE STOCK UTILIZATION OF

TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE IN VIETNAM

ĐÁNH GIÁ SỰ HIỆU QUẢ CỦA VIỆC SỬ DỤNG VẬT LIỆU XÂY DỰNG TÍCH LŨY

TRONG CƠ SỞ HẠ TẦNG GIAO THÔNG VIỆT NAM

Nguyen Thi Cuc

University of Science and Technology – The University of Danang; cucnguyen@dut.udn.vn

Abstract - Vietnam’s good performing economy is characterized

by the rehabilitation and modernization of transport infrastructure

The large scale of construction activities for expansion and

maintenance of the road network has required huge amounts of

construction materials and posed environmental problems In the

attempt to support the development of sustainable transport in

Vietnam, this study investigates the material stocks of road network

and subsequently evaluates the effectiveness of stock utilization

regarding its provided services Based on the statistical data of

sixty-one provinces/cities in 2014, the results show that, (1) nearly

2800 million tons of construction materials was stocked in the road

infrastructure in Vietnam in 2014, (2) when evaluating the

effectiveness of transportation infrastructure’s stock utilization

basing on the relation between traffic flows and road stock, the

urban areas, especially municipalities experienced the high value

of service effectiveness indicators The outcomes of this research

are intended to assist the future development strategies,

particularly the Green Growth Strategy in Vietnam

Tóm tắt - Sự mở rộng và nâng cấp hệ thống giao thông đóng vai

trò quan trọng trong việc giúp nền kinh tế Việt Nam có những bước phát triển vượt bậc Sự mở rộng về quy mô của hoạt động trong xây dựng và bảo dưỡng mạng lưới giao thông đã gây ra những vấn đề về môi trường cần được quan tâm Với nỗ lực nhằm hướng tới sự phát triển giao thông vận tải bền vững, nghiên cứu này tập trung vào sự tiêu thụ và tích lũy vật liệu xây dựng trong mạng lưới đường bộ Kết quả tính toán dựa vào số liệu của sáu mươi mốt địa phương vào năm 2014 như sau: (1) Lượng vật liệu tích lũy trong

hệ thống đường bộ ở Việt Nam năm 2014 là xấp xỉ 2800 triệu tấn, (2) Khi đánh giá sự hiệu quả của việc sử dụng vật liệu xây dựng trong cơ sở hạ tầng giao thông Việt Nam dựa vào lưu lượng giao thông, các khu đô thị, đặc biệt là các thành phố trực thuộc Trung ương thể hiện tính hiệu quả cao Kết quả nghiên cứu giúp các nhà quản lý hoạch định được các chính sách cho chiến lược phát triển Tăng trưởng Xanh của Việt Nam

Key words - Material stock analysis; construction materials; waste

management; infrastructure

Từ khóa - Phân tích tích lũy vật liệu; vật liệu xây dựng; quản lý

chất thải; cơ sở hạ tầng

1 Introduction

It is the ultimate goal of every economy to reach a

certain degree of development and so for the last decade,

global efforts to improve the low-income economies have

results in unprecedented growth of economies Tantamount

to the growth of economies is rapid withdrawal and

utilization of the materials and energy from the

environment While these resources provide the basic

needs of the socio-economic system, the extraction,

processing and utilization bring disturbance to the natural

ecosystem affecting biodiversity, displacement, and wastes

discharged to the environmental system

Anthropogenic material stocks require huge raw

materials and energy to form and provide services to

society In 2015, a “Sustainable consumption and

production” (SCP) has been recognized as one of the

Sustainable Development Goals [1], patening the

increasing environmental awareness of all countries,

developed and developing alike, who are striving to

promote the framework of actions and policies for a more

efficient use of materials, a lower resource consumption

and for decreasing environmental pressures As can be seen

from developed countries such as European countries and

Japan, there are many policies toward more sustainable and

efficient patterns of resources consumption and stock

accumulation [2] However, unlike its counterparts, the

developing countries are still moving their first steps into

the field of sustainable development goals

Demands on infrastructure and related services increase

as people expect a higher quality of life and public services There are many indicators for measuring services from transport by many kinds of perspectives and among them; some are taken into consideration from monetary perspectives For transport services, passenger and goods flows, which are absolutely traffic data, are simply used as good indicators that show transportation service that the transport sector provides For measuring the effectiveness

of utilization of infrastructure, Santosa et al [3] defined based on the ratio between output and outcome Accepting stock existence as outcome of material accumulation, passenger flows, and goods flows are taken as the output

of services

Currently, researchers paid more attentions to material consumption and environment problems of infrastructure construction Hashimoto et al [4] clarified the relationship between stock and flow for two stock types namely non-potential wastes and secondary resources Tanikawa et al [5] analyzed material accumulation over time in urban metabolism using four-dimensional geographic information system data For the material stock studies related to infrastructure in Vietnam, Fishman et al [6] are the only obvious studies that attempted to trace material stock accumulation by applying top-down method This allows for analyzing the change of flow intensity, building time series material stock and even modeling the volume

of future material However, due to requiring a large amount of information and statistics regarding historical flows, its application on the global scale, especially in developing countries, is more difficult That is a reason

ISSN 1859-1531 - TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG, SỐ 5(126).2018, Quyển 2 11 why the measurement of stock quantities in these countries

often relies on the second method namely bottom-up

approach

Being one of large absorption sources of materials and

energy, together with building stocks, transportation

infrastructure’ stocks provide important services to society

in Vietnam The development of Vietnam’s transportation

infrastructure, particularly roads, has contributed

significantly to the economic growth and to regional

development The transport system in Vietnam relies

highly on road transport that handles significant percentage

of the country’s passenger movement and freight

movement In the recognition of its importance, transport

sector investment of Vietnam has been focused on the road

network development Construction of such great amount

of roadway network may cause increased resource

consumption and associated environmental problems such

as resource depletion Indeed, since the consumed

construction materials such as gravel, sand, and limestone

for building and maintaining the road systems rely on the

domestic production that is extracting from natural

sources, the increasing consumption of these minerals

obviously has affected the natural environment Therefore,

seeking the effective way to utilize infrastructure stock,

reduce the material consumption and associated

environmental impacts is very important to help

policy-makers to formulate policies to realize the sustainable

development

In this view thereof, this study of material stock

accounts is conducted Passenger flows and goods flows

are taken as service indicators of traffic and used in finding

the effectiveness of transport stock utilization

2 Data and Methodology

2.1 Material Flow and Stock Accounts

Figure 1 The system boundary of EW flows and stocks

(being adapted from Eurostat, 2001) [8]

This study is based on the Material Flow Analysis

(MFA) approach, allowing account the volume of

materials during their transitions into and out of the

defined systems regarding time and space Eurostat, the

statistics division of the European Commission, has

created the framework namely Economy-wide MFA

(EW-MFA) [7] for either regional or national boundary

Not only introducing standardized systems of method to

account material flows, EW-MFA also provides concepts

regarding abbreviations, indicators and terminology in Material flows and stocks field Figure 1 shows the key indicators using in this study as well as the relations between them

In which:

(a) Material stock (MS): This indicator refers to the sum of materials in society in a given year It is defined as the composition of all physical goods as well as amassed goods that are in wait to be used Due to focus only on transportation infrastructure and construction minerals, this study considers only the in-used stocks of such type of infrastructure In other words, those unused roads and railroads that have not yet been demolished will not be taken into account

(b) Domestic Material Consumption (DMC): This is classified as consumption indicator, referring to the total quantity of material input which is directly used by a national economy in a given year

(c) Gross Additions to Stock (GAS): This indicator refers to the additional annual stock to the human society

in a given year In the case of construction materials, there

is usually partly amount of DMC becoming GAS with some below assumptions:

- DMC is comprised of both raw, semi-manufactures, processed materials and final products Therefore, only a certain percentage of this input flow is used on purpose

- This certain percentage does not become stocked without splitting for other types of consumption

- Since our scope is the category of construction mineral forming in used stocks, the materials that become waste during construction of those stocks will not take part

in this study

(d) Removal from Stock (RS): This is an outflow indicator It is defined as the stock that has been demolished and removed from the society

(e) Net Additions to Stock (NAS): It is classified as balancing indicator and is equivalent to the amount of GAS and demolished stocks in a given year

2.2 Bottom-up Approach to Measure Material Stock of Roads

Figure 2 Flowchart for the Estimation of

the Material Stock of Roadways

12 Nguyen Thi Cuc The bottom-up approach is applied to estimate Material

stocks of Roads For the estimation of non-metallic

materials stocked in road networks in Vietnam, we have

applied the bottom-up approach (Eq.1) In this way, we

estimate materials stocked in four different road types

regarding pavement including asphalt, stone, mixed stone

and soil, soil roads Figure 2 illustrates the flow diagram

for the calculation of the stock per material utilized in the

road system

MS𝑖,𝑗 (𝑡) = A𝑗(𝑡) × I𝑖,𝑗 (Eq 1)

Where:

A𝑗(𝑡) is the total area of specific road category j at year t

I𝑖,𝑗 (𝑡) is the material intensity of material i in specific

road category j

2.3 Data Sources

2.3.1 The regional length of roads

To quantify in physical terms of road infrastructure, this

study uses data regarding the total lengths of roadways

derived from reliable national data sources (General

Statistical Office) for the year 2014, at provincial level

2.3.2 Material Intensity

This is the important indicator affecting material stock

accumulation The material intensities for the

above-mention road categories are estimated based on the

Standard Specifications for Construction which is provided

by Vietnamese Ministry of Construction in 2007 [9] Due

to the lack of reliable material intensity data for the

previous years of 2007, it is assumed there is no change of

this data over the studied period It meant that material

intensity data in 2007 is applied to calculate material stock

of roads in Vietnam for the year 2014

Table 1 Material Intensities of Roadways in Vietnam

No

e Material intensity (kg/𝒎𝟐) for roads in

Vietnam Surface layer Base layer

3 Results and Discussions

In-use stocks of construction materials in roads are

estimated for the year 2014 at the regional level for 61

Vietnamese provinces/cities This study does not consider

Tay Ninh and Binh Duong provinces due to lack of data

In 2014, the total material stock accumulation in roads

in Vietnam was 2,827 Million tons (Mt) Figure 3a presents

material stocks in 2014 at the provincial level The

significant amount of material stocks of the year are

concentrated in the provinces/cities that are

socio-economic zones and included high densities of industrial

zones, big airports or seaports

a) Material Stock of Roads in 2014

b) Service Effectiveness Indicator (SEI)

For Goods Flow, national average SEI = 20 tkm/ton

For Passenger Flow, national average SEI = 42 pkm/ton

Figure 3 a) Material Stock of Road in provinces in 2014;

b) Service Effectiveness Indicator (SEI) for Goods Flow and

Passenger Flow

ISSN 1859-1531 - TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG, SỐ 5(126).2018, Quyển 2 13 The Service Effectiveness Indicator offers some

interesting facts to be observed Although accumulating

higher material stocks of roads, most of provinces/cities in

Northern Midlands and Mountain Areas, Central

Highlands and Mekong River Delta experienced the low

Service Effectiveness for goods flows and passenger flows

(Figure 3b) Considering the municipalities including Ha

Noi, Hai Phong, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City, Can Tho, it

is found that those provinces/cities had high effective

levels of stock utilization The huge traffic volume

regarding passenger and domestic cargo transport reflects

the more effective utilization of roads in such areas

Nevertheless, the lifespan of road stocks would be reduced

due to the high carriage, leading to the need of building

new roads for the replacement Apparently, not only the

huge amount of construction cost but future raw material

consumption, energy and water usage will be consumed for

the process of maintaining and building new roads The

importance of long-lifespan infrastructure stocks in

developing sustainability has already been mentioned in

some literature [10, 11] Therefore, although getting high

SEI regarding material usage perspective, those

municipalities have faced challenges regarding traffic

congestion and decrease of road stock quality The

authorities should accordingly consider suppressing traffic

flows to other sub-transport sector for slowing down the

deterioration process so that the service lifetimes of

existing road stocks would be prolonged

4 Conclusion

This study has assessed the material stocks related to

construction of the Vietnam road infrastructure for year

2014 Planning to become a fully industrialized country by

2020, Vietnam has experienced a sharp increase in

construction activities since the beginning of the XXI

century This has led to a rapid growth of extraction and

consumption of construction minerals, as well as an

increase in road material stock Despite the very limited

data available at a regional level, we have been able to

show the difference of stocks as well as their service

effectiveness in the provinces of Vietnam, which is useful

to tailor future local environmental policies

An efficient transport infrastructure is indispensable to

foster socio-economic development Nevertheless, the ever increasing extraction and consumption of construction materials poses serious environmental threats The government of Vietnam needs to take strong action to make sure that its construction minerals which are supplied through a sustainable chain will limit environmental impacts

Acknowledgement

This research was financially supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund of the Ministry of Environment, Japan The authors gratefully appreciate the fund support that made it possible

to complete this study

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[3] W Santosa, T.B Joewono, An evaluation of road network performance in Indonesia, Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, 2005, pp 2418-2433

[4] S Hashimoto, H Tanikawa, Y Moriguchi, Framework for estimating potential wastes and secondary resources accumulated within an economy–A case study of construction minerals in Japan,

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[7] Eurostat, Economy-wide material flow accounts (EW-MFA), compilation guide 2013 Luxembourg: Eurostat (2013)

[8] Eurostat, Economy-wide material flow accounts and derived indicators: A methodology guide Luxembourg: Eurostat (2001) [9] M.o.C.o Vietnam, Standard Specifications for Construction By-law document No.1784/BXD-VP (2007)

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(The Board of Editors received the paper on 29/11/2017, its review was completed on 24/5/2018)