Sustainable Critical Infrastructure Systems A Framework for Meeting 21st Century Imperatives: Report of a Workshop (2009) / Chapter Skim
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These imperatives included providing for public health, safety, and comfort, national security, economic expansion, and job growth. Meeting these imperatives required the construction of water, wastewater, and power systems, as well as roads, railways, airports, and telecommunications systems.
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At the same time, other national challenges that will affect quality of life include, but are not limited to, the following: • Remaining economically competitive with the European Union, China, India, and other economic powers; • Reducing U.S. dependence on imported oil; • Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions linked to global climate change; • Protecting the environment and conserving increasingly scarce natural resources, including potable water; and • Developing the capacity to withstand and recover quickly from natural and human-made disasters. Meeting these challenges requires critical infrastructure sys tems that are efficient, reliable, and cost-effective.
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. In recent years, both public and private organizations have called for improvements in critical infrastructure systems, often recommending massive financial investments. However, approaching infrastructure renewal by continuing to use the same processes, practices, technologies, and materials that were developed in the 20th century will likely yield the same results: increasing instances of service disruptions, higher operating and repair costs, and the possibility of catastrophic, cascading failures such as those in New Orleans in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina.
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Renewal efforts must take into account an extensive network of existing systems, urban development, ownership patterns, construction processes, management practices, financing mechanisms, and regulatory mandates. Every year public- and private-sector organizations spend hundreds of billions of dollars to operate and maintain power, water, wastewater, transportation, and telecommunications sys tems.
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To date, however, infrastructure-related technological advances, plans, approaches, and community-based initiatives have been ad hoc in nature, often focusing on one issue, one type of system, or one set of solutions. Lacking a national vision or strategy for critical infrastructure renewal and concentrating on single projects, technologies, financing mechanisms, or narrowly defined objectives, ad hoc efforts run the risk of underutilizing or wasting scarce resources and increasing the probability of serious, unintended consequences.
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They include infrastructure owners, designers, engineers, financiers, regulators, and policy makers, as well as ecologists, community activists, scientists, and research ers. Working within the framework, experts in such areas could begin to identify a full range of new approaches, technologies, and materials for providing services involving mobility, connec tivity, water, wastewater, and power to meet multiple objectives.
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