Augmenting the cities’ and metropolitan regional demands for mega rail infrastructure: the application of SWOT and factor analysis
Abstract
Purpose
In successfully meeting city and metropolitan growth, sustainable development is compulsory. Sustainability is a must-focus for any project, particularly for large and mega rail infrastructure. This paper aims to investigate to what degree social, environmental and economic factors influence the government when planning sustainable rail infrastructure projects. To respond to such a matter, this paper focuses on two Australian mega-rail projects: the South West Rail Link (SWRL) and the Mernda Rail Extension (MRE).
Design/methodology/approach
As the basis of an experimental evaluation framework strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) and factor analysis were used. These two methods were specifically selected as comparative tools for SWRL and SWRL projects, to measure their overall sustainability effect.
Findings
Using factor analysis, in the MRE, the factors of network capacity, accessibility, employment and urban planning were seen frequently throughout the case study. However, politics and economic growth had lower frequencies throughout this case study. This difference between the high-weighted factors is likely a key element that determined the SWRL to be more sustainable than the MRE. The SWOT analysis showed the strengths the MRE had over the SWRL such as resource use and waste management, and natural habitat preservation. These two analyses have shown that overall, calculating the sustainability levels of a project can be subjective, based on the conditions surrounding various analysis techniques.
Originality/value
This paper first introduces SWRL and MRE projects followed by a discussion about their overall sustainable development. Both projects go beyond the traditional megaprojects' goal of improving economic growth by developing and enhancing infrastructure. Globally, for such projects, sustainability measures are now considered alongside the goal of economic growth. Second, SWOT and factor analysis are undertaken to further evaluate the complexity of such projects. This includes their overall sustainable development vision alignment with environmental, economic and social factors.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Since submission of this article, the following author(s) have updated their affiliation(s): Kong Fah Tee is at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Interdisciplinary Research Center for Construction and Building Materials, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Corrigendum: It has come to the attention of the publisher that the article: Mihocic, E., Gharehbaghi, K., Hilletofth, P., Tee, K.F. and Myers, M. (2024), “Augmenting the cities’ and metropolitan regional demands for mega rail infrastructure: the application of SWOT and factor analysis”, Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/SASBE-02-2023-0044 incorrectly listed Per Hilletofth’s affiliation as Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden. The correct affiliation is University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden.
Citation
Mihocic, E., Gharehbaghi, K., Hilletofth, P., Tee, K.F. and Myers, M. (2024), "Augmenting the cities’ and metropolitan regional demands for mega rail infrastructure: the application of SWOT and factor analysis", Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/SASBE-02-2023-0044
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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