Despite a broad consensus that high transportation costs are a large barrier to economic development, many of the world’s poor live in rural communities without paved roads, impeding their access to outside markets and public services. Nevertheless, the impact of rural roads on economic activity has proven difficult for economists to assess. We first motivate our empirical approach by demonstra...

Potholes are a nuisance, especially in the developing world, and can often result in vehicle damage or physical harm to the vehicle occupants. Drivers can be warned to take evasive action if potholes are detected in real-time. Moreover, their location can be logged and shared to aid other drivers and road maintenance agencies. This paper proposes a vehicle-based computer vision approach to iden...

Particulate Matter (PM(10)) has been one of the main air pollutants exceeding the ambient standards in most of the major cities in India. During last few years, receptor models such as Chemical Mass Balance, Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF), PCA-APCS and UNMIX have been used to provide solutions to the source identification and contributions which are accepted for developing effective and ef...

Thousands of mammals are killed annually from vehicle collisions, making the issue an important one for conservation biologists and environmental managers. We recorded all readily identifiable kills on or immediately adjacent to roads in the southern Great Plains from March 2004-March 2007. We also recorded distance traveled, whether a road was paved or divided, the number of lanes, and prevail...

Road potholes are not only nuisance but can also damage vehicles and pose serious safety risks for drivers. Recently, a number of approaches have been developed for automatic pothole detection using equipment such as accelerometers, image sensors or LIDARs. Mounted on vehicles, such as taxis or buses, the sensors can automatically detect potholes as the vehicles carry out their normal operation...

Abstract In some regions of the world, large carnivores, such as wolves, persist in landscapes with dense networks paved roads. However, beyond general impacts roads on wildlife, we still lack information carnivore responses to different types and traffic volume levels. Using wolves NW Spain a case study, show how respond differently road classes depending size, speed limit volume. All evaluate...

We sampled 21 study plots for desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California. Each plot was sampled once between 1997 and 2003 to obtain a snapshot of population attributes, status, and relationships between tortoise densities and human activities. Densities ranged from o1 to 28 tortoises km ; overall, tortoises were uncommon to rare at 16 of the 2...