The next decade is predicted to be difficult for many economies around the world. The financial consequences of the banking crisis and subsequent recession will result in very limited funds being available for investment in municipal infrastructure and that will pose problems for engineers and managers charged with providing these services. While there have been proposals for funding infrastructure and service maintenance through a variety of new mechanisms (Hayes, 2009; Kershaw and Hutchison, 2009), a convincing business case will still have to be made to persuade the funding and commissioning authorities. This issue contains a number of papers that give useful pointers for such an approach.
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