Managing SADC Roads Agencies in the New Millennium: The Role of Road Asset Management Systems
The management of the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) road network is a complex task which is often influenced by a variety of factors – technical, financial, social and political – which all enter into the decision making process at various levels of their roads agencies. In such an environment, the determination of optimal strategies requires the use of a rational “systems” approach to road asset management. This paper outlines the road management strategy that is being pursued in a number of countries in the SADC region. It then illustrates how these systems are being used at various levels of application to achieve the desired objectives of the road agency.
An Empirical Assessment of the Success of Road Asset Management System in Tanzania and Its Economic Value in Managing and Planning for Roads Pavement
The deployment of Information Communication Technology in the Road sector has contributed positively towards achieving the national goal of ICT for infrastructure development. However, the deployment of ICT software for Road infrastructure in underdeveloped countries has been done with duplication of efforts contributing to software failure. This study aimed in evaluating the effectiveness and economic values of the Road Maintenance Management System in Tanzania.  The study deployed System Usability Scale Framework in 26 regions of Tanzania, and Kruskal-Wallis test was used for significance testing. The result indicates positive response of adopting and scaling the Road Maintenance Management System to all 26 regions in the country with R2=0.863. The usability of the system remains steady for almost three years from 2017 to 2019. The economic value of system is found to be above average (61%), while the value for money is found to reach 76.5% of the expectation. It is therefore concluded that the use of ICT in planning for Roads Maintenance increases efficiency in delivery critical factors that facilitated decision making in road planning and also improves specific services delivery in government efficiency.
ASSESSING AGE AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PERCEIVED RISK AND FEAR OF CRIME
Much of the research on fear of crime indicates that women and older persons are highly afraid of crime. These findings, especially older persons' fear of crime, are widely communicated in the scientific and popular media. This study examines age and gender differences in perceived risk and fear of crime. The data are from telephone interviews of 320 randomly selected residents in a southeastern metropolitan area of the United States. The relationships of age and gender to fear of crime are compared using a National Crime Survey (NCS) measure of fear of crime and 11 alternative indicators of fear of specific offenses. Women reported signifcantly greater perceived risk and fear of crime than men regardless of how fear of crime was measured and older adults reported the greatest fear of crime when the NCS measure was used. but not when the alternative individual measures of fear of crime were used. A LISREL model with latent constructs for fear of personal crime and fear of property crime also indicates that older adults do not have higher levels of fear of crime. In short, the extent of fear in the everyday lives of most older persons has been overestimated in many previous studies because of measurement problems.