Final Report Based on the
WORKSHOP ON INTEGRATED RESEARCH FOR
CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURE
July 15-17, 1996
Washington, DC
Principal Investigator
Rae Zimmerman
Professor of Planning and Public Administration
Co-Principal Investigator
Roy Sparrow
Professor of Public Administration
funded by the National Science Foundation
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
New York University
4 Washington Square North
New York, NY 10003
February 1997
This Workshop was conducted by New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of
Public Service in cooperation with the Polytechnic University Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering and supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation
(NSF).
Workshop Planning Group Members
Priscilla P. Nelson, Coordinator of the Civil Infrastructure Systems Work Group,
Program Director, Geomechanical, Geotechnical and Geo-Environmental
Systems, CMS Division, and Acting Senior Engineering Advisor, Directorate for
Engineering, NSF
Rae Zimmerman, Professor of Planning and Public Administration, NYU
Principal Investigator
Roy Sparrow, Professor of Public Administration, NYU
Co-Principal Investigator
Arden Bement, Professor of Engineering, Purdue University
John Falcocchio, Professor of Transportation, Polytechnic University
Kingsley Haynes, Professor of Public Policy,
George Mason University
Ilan Juran, Professor and Head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department,
Polytechnic University
Thomas D. O’Rourke, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Cornell University
Angelos Protopapas, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Polytechnic University
Co-Chairs
Arden Bement, Professor of Engineering, Purdue University
Sigurd Grava, Professor of Planning, Columbia University
Thomas D. O’Rourke, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Cornell University
Other Contributors
Roger Stough, Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University
Graduate Research Assistant
Danielle Renart (Master of Urban Planning candidate, NYU)
Copy-Editing
Linda Wheeler Reiss
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter 1 Introduction
1
Chapter 2 Urban Concentrations
12
Chapter 3 Infrastructure and Interurban and Suburban Networks
25
Chapter 4 Infrastructure Sustainability
44
Chapter 5 Summary and Conclusions
56
APPENDICES
61
A. The Workshop Process and Organization
B. Workshop Summary and List of Workshop Planning Group Members;
Workshop Agenda
C. Research Topics
D. List of Workshop Participants, Speakers, and Observers
E. Short Biographies of Workshop Participants
F. Research Questions; Short Papers by Participants
A-1
B-1
C-1
D-1
E-1
F-1
PREFACE
The U.S. has a multi-trillion dollar investment in civil infrastructure systems. While the quality
and performance of infrastructure are vital to the nation’s economic and social well-being, by
most accounts this investment has not been prudently managed for sustainability. New
knowledge is needed to provide the intellectual support for infrastructure decisions necessary to
sustain economic growth, environmental quality, and improved societal health well into the next
century. Such knowledge can only be initiated through research which is interdisciplinary.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has identified Civil Infrastructure Systems (CIS) as a
strategic research area for promoting an integrated approach to research for the intelligent
renewal of civil infrastructure systems. NSF contributes to intelligent infrastructure renewal
through the support of research that focuses on the scientific, engineering, and educational
advancements needed to sustain civil infrastructure systems. These research areas are
represented by separate directorates. In recent years, interdisciplinary research programs have
assumed an important role at NSF. These efforts, however, have been confined largely to the
areas of natural environment, built environment, and socioeconomic and human environment,
and have occurred primarily within individual directorates rather than among them.
NSF has established the Civil Infrastructure Systems Working Group (the CISWG) to develop
the intellectual basis for interdisciplinary CIS research programs. These research programs are
directed toward new understanding of system performance and guidance in support of resource
allocation decisions in civil infrastructure systems investment and management. The CISWG
has been co-chaired by the Assistant Directors for the Directorates for Engineering and for
Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. Dr. Priscilla Nelson has served as coordinator for
the CISWG since FY95.
In order to assist in defining an integrative research agenda for CIS research, NSF supported the
Workshop on Integrated Research in Civil Infrastructure, convened by New York University,
and held July 15-17, 1996 in Washington, DC. The Workshop and the accompanying report
represent the concerted effort of numerous participants. The Workshop Planning Group directed
the organization and design of the Workshop from its inception. Participants representing many
disciplines contributed papers and ideas for the Workshop. A core group of the Planning Group
members, which included the principal investigators and co-chairs, prepared the Workshop
report.
This report provides NSF with a thorough account of the content of the Workshop, including the
major issues raised and the key research questions identified. It is intended also for the wider
audience of academics and practitioners who are engaged in the work of improving the quality
and functioning of infrastructure systems.
Rae Zimmerman
Principal Investigator
Roy Sparrow
Co-Principal Investigator
WORKSHOP CONTACTS
Dr. Priscilla P. Nelson, Program Director
Geomechanical, Geotechnical and Geo-Environmental Systems
CMS Division, and
Acting Senior Engineering Advisor
Directorate for Engineering
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Blvd. Rm. 545.17
Arlington, VA 22230
Tel: (703) 306-1361
FAX: (703) 306-0291
e-mail: [email protected]
Rae Zimmerman, Principal Investigator
Professor of Planning & Public Administration
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public
Service
New York University
4 Washington Square North
New York, NY 10003
Tel: (212) 998-7432
FAX: (212) 995-3890
e-mail: [email protected]
Roy Sparrow, Co-Principal Investigator
Professor of Public Administration
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public
Service
New York University
4 Washington Square North
New York, NY 10003
Tel: (212) 998-7505
FAX: (212) 995-3890
e-mail: [email protected]
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.0 SCOPE AND DEFINITION
Infrastructure is a pervasive part of every aspect of urbanized life, and increasingly impacts the
human and natural environment. The scale of infrastructure systems in the United States
continues to increase, along with the number of institutions involved in planning and managing
them. Widespread use of the term infrastructure has occurred only recently, and clear consensus
on its definition has yet to be achieved. The 1995 NSF CIS program announcement for the
integrative research program defined infrastructure in terms of its components: “Infrastructure
systems consist of the constructed physical facilities which support the day-to-day activity of our
whole society, and provide the means for distribution of resources and services, for
transportation of people and goods, and for communication of information” (National Science
Foundation, March 1995). A report from the National Research Council Building Research
Board defined infrastructure more simply as constructed facilities and their associated services
(Grant and Lemer, 1993).
Those who participated in the Workshop understood infrastructure to mean facilities and services
that provide support to social and economic activities. Infrastructure areas covered in the
Workshop were transportation, water supply, wastewater treatment and collection, and energy,
though other areas such as solid waste management and telecommunications were touched upon
for contextual or comparative purposes. More extensive examples of infrastructure facilities are
listed in Appendix 1B.
Many performance and quality issues related to large and complex infrastructure systems can be
handled within the context of science, engineering and mathematics. Yet, the service side of
infrastructure and its human and environmental contexts demand an integration of the social,
behavioral, economic, managerial, and decision sciences with technological considerations
because they interact with one another. The points at which these different areas relate are
numerous. For example, functional specializations of design, construction, operation, and
maintenance continually interact to provide basic services. Funding also requires extensive
interaction, although interaction on funding issues often produces as much competition as
cooperation, because different functions, facilities, and jurisdictions must compete for funds.
The key question for the Workshop was how an integrated research agenda can provide an
understanding of the effect of social, political, technological, and economic interactions on the
performance of infrastructure. Integration, described in more detail in the next section, aims at
promoting a common language and approach to simultaneously meeting social, economic,
technological, and institutional needs of infrastructure development and management.
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1.1 INTEGRATION: A KEY CONCEPT
The Workshop’s charge was to identify research questions pertaining to the provision and
performance of infrastructure which required the concerted effort of different disciplines. The
issue of when and how to integrate disciplines arose as a major concern that frames research
topics. Thus, a discussion of the term integration is critical at the outset.
In order to comprehensively approach the theme of integrated infrastructure research, the
Workshop was divided into three groups: urban concentrations, less dense areas, and
infrastructure sustainability, that are described in more detail in Section 1.3 of this chapter.
Integration has several meanings, some of which the three themes share in common, and some of
which differ for each of the three areas. Meanings of the concept of integrated infrastructure that
the three areas share in common are:
•
Functional integration suggests opportunities to relate infrastructure processes to one
another, such as waste management and energy, which can occur in very dense as well as
less dense areas. It is also critical to sustainability in identifying and carrying out economies
of scale in the general use of resources.
•
Integration also pertains to the sharing of knowledge and information so that social and
economic needs for infrastructure can be integrated with its technological aspects.
•
Integrated management addresses cooperative mechanisms among
organizations, levels of government, and interests that share infrastructure.
•
Conceptually speaking, the integration of infrastructure is an essential foundation for the
design and upkeep of service needs and the manner in which people live, allocate resources,
and develop communities.
the
numerous
Some aspects of the concept of integration also differ for the three different workshop themes:
In urban concentrations, the integration of engineering, social sciences and economics is needed
to address infrastructure’s support of social and economic activities that function in close
proximity to one another. Moreover, the historical development of urban infrastructure has led
to a density of facilities that increases the complexity of the renewal process. When institutional
and professional traditions and protocols encourage specialists to work autonomously without
addressing how the pieces all fit together, the individual components of the system may work
reasonably well, but the integrity of the overall system may suffer. Urban systems too often lack
an integrating architecture - a systems perspective that integrates both the geographic location of
facilities and services and their timing or sequencing.
Many types, levels or dimensions of integration were identified for interurban and suburban
networks, in part because the networks exist in so many different forms. Addressing the multidimensionality of infrastructure is particularly critical for infrastructure in these less dense urban
areas, since the provision of facilities and services usually occurs over a much greater area. A
policy that aims at concentrating facilities geographically - that is, producing larger, more
2
coordinated facilities that may work in a dense area - could increase the magnitude and
probability of large scale failures over larger areas if something goes wrong.
Infrastructure sustainability implies still other uses of the integration concept. The concept of
sustainability achieved widespread use in the context of environmental protection and general
resource conservation, and has since been defined in many different ways (Costanza, 1991). As
applied generally to infrastructure, it can be defined as achieving a balance of human activity
(including human settlements and population growth) with its surroundings, so as not to exceed
available resources. Addressing this issue involves integrating natural and physical sciences,
engineering, social and behavioral sciences, economics, and associated institutions.
Acknowledging and addressing interdependencies between infrastructure and its environment is
central to the design, use, and management of infrastructure that adheres to a philosophy of
sustainability.
The concept of integration as applied to infrastructure has both analytical and institutional
dimensions. First, several analytical techniques promote integration. For example, multiobjective decision analysis has provided an accounting system for multiple, often conflicting
components and their relationships that bear upon a single outcome. Meta-analysis is another
tool, which integrates the results and the data from different and often conflicting studies through
some summary measure that identifies a central tendency. Computer software is becoming
sophisticated enough to expedite the integration of different infrastructure systems with the
social and economic fabric of society. Second, institutions that can promote integration should
be identified. For example, universities are considered an important forum for exploring
integrative work, because they have a diversity of scholarship. However, institutional processes
to achieve integration need attention, including the design of new organizational and
interorganizational systems, coalition-building, partnering, and conflict resolution methods.
An important outcome of integrated research is intelligent infrastructure renewal. Renewal is the
physical rehabilitation of existing facilities to improve safety and service. The process
commonly involves public approval and engineering. It usually entails changes in the physical
and mechanical characteristics of existing structures and facilities, but may also include
substantial modifications to electric and telecommunication systems. The process may be
focused on a single facility or it may be applied throughout a system of facilities. In the latter
case especially, renewal involves economic, social and political dimensions.
Intelligent renewal can be thought of in the following way:
•
The development, integration, and deployment of state-of-the-art research and technology are
needed to maintain and renew the infrastructure more effectively.
•
Intelligent renewal focuses strategically and holistically on the best possible quality of
systems within a given set of cost constraints.
•
Solutions to infrastructure problems are likely to involve social, economic, environmental,
legal, and political issues, as well as technical ones.
3
These concepts are new to many professional communities involved in infrastructure, and
individuals do not necessarily ascribe the same meaning to these concepts.
1.2 THE NECESSITY FOR INTEGRATED INFRASTRUCTURE RESEARCH
Nature of the Issues
Infrastructure systems are interconnected physically and geographically. They are both
dependent upon and impact human and natural environments. Yet, the institutions for
management, planning, technology, and education that support them are highly specialized and
politically and functionally fragmented.
The adequacy of our knowledge to understand, manage, and integrate the various dimensions of
infrastructure and its contexts is continually being questioned. Research that combines
technical, social, and economic expertise has been scarce, despite the need for an
interdisciplinary approach. As a consequence, our understanding of infrastructure problems, like
infrastructure itself, remains fragmented and compartmentalized.
An integrated research agenda is needed to enhance the knowledge of the social, economic, and
environmental contexts in which infrastructure operates and their relationship to the engineering
aspects of infrastructure. The following examples are typical of the issues and problem areas
that require an integrated approach to infrastructure research.
•
Population growth is continuing to increase in most large, urbanized areas. Growth is no
longer a one-time event, but tends to be cyclical. New booms in urban growth are continuing
to occur at rates often faster than can be accommodated by infrastructure capacity.
•
These population booms produce spatial patterns that often differ dramatically from past
patterns in that they are occurring faster and in new places, often influenced by intricate
regulatory requirements (including zoning), investment policies and political environments.
Population increasingly is being redistributed away from the core, producing different spatial
patterns to which existing and new infrastructure systems continually have to adapt. This
necessitates a redirection of thinking about infrastructure. Institutions that have traditionally
been separate, acting in isolation, need to be brought together to address these problems.
•
Public expectations and perceptions about levels and types of service are continually
changing as styles, experiences and standards of living change. A mechanism to integrate
these socio-psychological factors into infrastructure planning and development is needed.
•
The magnitude and distribution of investments in infrastructure are changing (Perry, 1995).
The manner in which investments are made (particularly their timing and the length of
budgetary cycles) have a considerable influence on the extent to which maintenance,
operational needs and new technological innovations can be integrated upfront into new
design and construction.
4
•
A comprehensive accounting of infrastructure costs that reflect social, economic and
environmental costs does not always exist. Investments based upon partial and incomplete
accounting systems are considered to be factors in urban sprawl and the inability of
infrastructure capacity to keep up with these urban development patterns.
Although many of these problems are not new, their persistence, and the uncertainty of how they
will change in magnitude and direction make a strong case for a continuation and possibly a
redirection of integrated thinking behind the management and planning of infrastructure systems.
This Workshop addressed the interdisciplinary research needed to create a dialogue among the
physical sciences, engineering, and social sciences for our national infrastructure.
Barriers to Integration and Obstacles to Overcoming Them
Given these needs, there are numerous examples of the barriers to integration, which are
described in detail in subsequent chapters, but a few examples are illustrative of what they entail:
•
Centralized management and procedures currently do not exist for data acquisition,
integration, interpretation and use across infrastructure types, jurisdictions, organizations,
and functional areas.
•
Common frameworks generally do not exist or are not always applied to the evaluation of
infrastructure because its value is highly subjective, and varies by place, time and users.
•
Specialized infrastructure organizations and institutions have little incentive, ability or need
to coordinate with one another when the need arises.
•
Different priority systems exist in different jurisdictions that often defy integration - at least
across political or geographic boundaries.
•
Often no mechanism for the true accounting of infrastructure costs (including social,
economic and environmental costs, and the reflection of those costs in the pricing of
infrastructure) exists. The absence of such a mechanism is considered to be a major factor in
the promotion of urban sprawl.
These barriers are familiar ones, and have appeared and reappeared in many forms.
In spite of this knowledge and the often demonstrated need for interagency action and
interfunctional coordination, barriers to integration remain. One purpose of the Workshop was
to explore why they persist, and what research could help overcome these barriers. Reasons for
the persistence of these barriers are numerous. For example:
•
Large, in place infrastructure facilities and services are often not sufficiently flexible to meet
the needs of a changing population and its distribution.
5
•
Major changes in the fabric of society are often required to integrate institutions that are
typically segmented, and there are few incentives to introduce these changes when the need
to do so arises.
•
Time frames for social and cultural change, technological development, and investment are
often out of sync with one another and with political and policy-making calendars.
•
Data and information about contextual factors for infrastructure are poorly developed and
inconsistent, and few mechanisms exist to promote a better integration of these factors into
infrastructure databases.
•
Professional, technical, and scientific education for infrastructure careers continues to be
largely disciplinary and overly narrow despite trends in infrastructure management becoming
increasingly interdisciplinary.
The Workshop was organized to investigate how integrated research can reduce these barriers as
well as promote more coordinated and effective solutions.
Background: Previous Approaches to Integrated Research
The need for an integrated approach to infrastructure research was flagged by numerous studies
during the 1980s and early 1990s, for example, by the National Commission on Public Works
Improvement (February, 1988) and the National Research Council’s Board on Infrastructure and
the Constructed Environment (Grant and Lemer, 1993; National Research Council, 1995).
In recognition of the need for an interdisciplinary approach to infrastructure systems, the NSF
established an internal team - the Civil Infrastructure Systems Working Group (CISWG) with
Dr. Priscilla Nelson as the coordinator of that team.
The CISWG intellectual paradigm was explored in two workshops held in the 1990s that
involved participants from universities, industry, the design community, and Federal agencies.
The first workshop, entitled, “Civil Infrastructure Systems Research,” was held in April 1992 by
the Directorate for Engineering (chaired by Ken Chong of the NSF) (CISTG, 1992) and the
second, entitled, “Public Infrastructure Research - A Public Infrastructure Research Agenda for
the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences” was held in April 1993 for the Directorate for
Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (Professor Dennis Epple was Chair of the Organizing
Committee) (Epple, April 1993). The participants in those workshops were drawn from many
disciplines; however, the majority of workshop participants tended to be from the same
disciplines as the directorates sponsoring them.
The first workshop focused on engineering aspects of infrastructure research. It recommended
that NSF establish a multi-disciplinary initiative addressing three issues: deterioration science,
assessment technologies, and renewal engineering. The second workshop added a fourth issue institutional effectiveness and productivity. These four issues represent the disciplinary
programs that now exist within NSF, and are the basis for awarding research grants. The
outcome of these workshops and other efforts was an FY95 program announcement calling for
6
an integrative research program for civil infrastructure with an emphasis on developing
educational programs to reflect such research.
These workshops underscored the need to incorporate social and institutional issues directly into
infrastructure research. The first workshop report noted that “. . .the solutions to infrastructure
problems are probably 5% technical and 95% social, political, environmental, and economic”
(CISTG, 1992). The second workshop underscored this and carried it further, indicating for
example, that “. . . effective and efficient infrastructure development depends as much or more
on what we know about human action as it does on advances in the various technologies and
material sciences” (CISTG, 1993).
Other research programs outside of the CIS initiative have attempted to address issues that
bridge the natural and the built environments. The NSF/EPA partnerships in water and
watersheds research and valuation are examples of this.
The purpose of the July 1996 Workshop on Integrated Research for Civil Infrastructure was to
identify and better understand those research issues that extend beyond individual systems, that
is, to carry the integrated infrastructure initiative still further as the basis for identifying
additional research questions. Given the barriers to conceptualizing infrastructure systems in an
integrated framework, the aim of the workshop was to identify what issues can be addressed
through research that is truly cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary. In other words, a research
should explore the interfaces among the disciplines and foster an understanding of the processes
of diffusion from one discipline to another. Moreover, the Workshop focused on the compelling
arguments and the intellectual basis for such a research program. These questions and their
rationale have to be clearly presented so they can be articulated to the research community.
Interdisciplinary research for infrastructure investment is often unclear, since the need for it
arises incrementally and in small doses. The challenge is to introduce proactive and preventive
approaches, rather than to respond to crises as they arise.
1.3 WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION
Integration means different things depending on the spatial configurations for human settlements
and the nature of the problems. To capture the multi-dimensionality of the concept of integrated
infrastructure research, three different perspectives were adopted: infrastructure issues associated
with (1) urban concentrations; (2) interurban and suburban networks; and (3) sustainability.
These three areas formed the basis of three working groups into which Workshop participants
were divided. Common themes were identified by the three groups, which are presented in
Appendix C - Research Topics.
Urban concentrations refer to relatively dense human settlement patterns and activities, which
are almost always associated with urban areas. These areas were identified as posing unique
problems for the provision and maintenance of infrastructure because of the density and scale of
existing systems and their close proximity to population and economic activity. Renewing
systems in urban areas generates issues that are unlike those in less densely settled areas, often
requiring unique management and institutional arrangements.
7
Interurban and suburban networks are generally areas of lower density located outside of cities
that often pose other problems for infrastructure. Several alternative models were identified to
characterize such areas, namely, gradually decreasing density rings focusing on a single urban
core (not considered a dominant model any more), undifferentiated sprawl, and a system of
specialized nodes placed along an infrastructure network.
Infrastructure sustainability transcends geography; that is, the spatial differences that distinguish
the first two areas. The focus is rather on the organizational, financial, informational, and
managerial approaches needed to maintain infrastructure systems or change them in a planned
way over the course of their lifetimes. Sustainability was discussed in terms of four topics: lifecycle engineering, technology investment, performance measures, and project management, as
well as the interrelationships among these four topics.
Given the interdisciplinary focus, Workshop participants were selected based on their perceived
ability to maintain a broad perspective across disciplines, their expertise in a particular discipline
related to infrastructure, their representativeness of a wide range of partnerships that would be
useful in achieving a successful solution, and the hope for dissemination of the outcomes of the
Workshop to the academic and partnership communities.
1.4 RESEARCH TOPICS
Topics that focused on integrated research were the major output of the Workshop. Although the
discussions were organized into three separate groups, several common themes emerged.
Research topics below are presented in a summary form, and are organized very broadly
according to those common themes.
Institutions and Institutional Processes
Finance: Methods are needed to make budget structures and budget cycles flexible enough to
incorporate entire life-cycle needs into the design process (including maintenance, renewal and
the introduction of new technologies), to incorporate service needs in terms of their tangible and
intangible social, economic, and environmental factors, and to encourage a sense of stewardship
in the public. A key aspect of this is whether or not the structure of the financing and budgeting
process and the design of long-term financing options can be adapted to accommodate such
mechanisms.
Technology Investment: Ways are needed to encourage financial support and the creation of
public/private partnerships for research and development as prerequisites to bring about new
technologies that address infrastructure needs.
Institutional Arrangements for Decision-making and Service Provision: Important research
considerations are the way in which institutional design or redesign objectives achieve an
interdisciplinary focus, an understanding of the barriers to implementation, and the nature of the
interface between infrastructure and non-infrastructure institutions. Alternative ways of
8
designing institutions to make decisions about new technology investment need to be
investigated, including the use of government facilities, university research centers, or private
sector entities. An approach is needed that identifies the political aspects of infrastructure
decisions which relate to key land use policy and management decisions, such as the suitability
of home rule vs. integration via regional management. Issues such as trust in institutions and the
differential rates of change in technological, social and cultural systems are important aspects of
the research as well.
Infrastructure Management: An investigation into the broadening of the traditional design and
project management procedures followed by engineers should be undertaken in order to promote
the objectives of interdisciplinary and integrated thinking about infrastructure. Methods such as
multi-objective decision-making, risk assessment and risk management, value analysis and
engineering, and emergency management should be explored as models for interdisciplinary
approaches to infrastructure management. A key question is how these processes can address
differential and constantly changing needs of the population and at the same time be sensitive to
the impact of infrastructure on the human and natural environments.
Analytical Frameworks and Data Management
Systems Approach: The potential for applying the systems approach to interdisciplinary
infrastructure issues and how it should be applied need to be determined. Past experiences with
the systems approach may be able to inform its use in infrastructure systems, and these
experiences should be identified.
The Useful Lifetime of Infrastructure: At the present time, the conceptualization and method of
analysis of infrastructure life spans and the values placed upon them are highly variable.
Methods are needed to evaluate the social, economic, engineering, scientific and environmental
bases for the real and expected lifetimes of different infrastructure facilities, and to integrate
them into life-cycle engineering (LCE), which focuses upon a consideration of future needs of
facilities into initial design and construction. The feasibility of adapting and clarifying LCE to
contribute to integrated infrastructure research needs to be determined.
Analytical Frameworks and Capabilities: Analytical methods should be developed that take into
account the variability in data types and uncertainty across disciplines. Whether or not models
can be adapted to support integrated infrastructure analyses has yet to be determined, along with
whether or not different models are needed to address integration for alternative urban settlement
patterns. In particular, the capability of existing models to relate geographic patterns of human
settlement to infrastructure capacity is an important research topic. Moreover, the extent to
which analytical approaches articulate the role of time - the rate of development and the timing
of investments - in the infrastructure development process has to be determined. The suitability
of supply and demand models for different types and levels of infrastructure services and
facilities is another aspect of this issue as well.
Databases and Information: Databases are necessary to integrate geographic, substantive, and
functional infrastructure contexts into technological concerns. Techniques have to be found to
develop a selection process for such information for specific purposes that is acceptable to the
9
users and managers of the databases and that is easily implemented. The management of these
databases in a way that allows for acquisition, access and sharing of information is a critical
aspect of the problem. Management structures have to be identified to accomplish these aims.
Education
Educational programs that use interdisciplinary approaches to infrastructure need to be
developed. The ultimate objective should be to reshape traditional thinking in engineering and
social science disciplines so that each recognizes and understands the outlook of the other. Ways
of identifying these programs and infusing each of these components into traditional approaches
to learning and training (i.e., the K-12, university, and professional levels) are needed. Programs
should address the education of the public, taking into account public attitudes toward
infrastructure.
What emerged from this Workshop is a continuing and compelling need for an integrated
approach to infrastructure management. Continuing changes in the nature of and trends in
population settlements, values and expectations about infrastructure services, and the fit of
financial and political institutions with infrastructure responsibilities, are but a few of the
conditions that create a need for an integrated perspective. The systems that educate engineers
and social scientists must keep pace with these conditions.
1.5 ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT
This introductory chapter describes the purpose of the Workshop, how it evolved, and research
areas currently being explored. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 address research questions pertaining
respectively to infrastructure in urban concentrations, infrastructure and interurban and suburban
networks, and the overarching concept of infrastructure sustainability. These three chapters
generally incorporate the elements of issues, barriers, and research questions to overcome
barriers to integration. Chapter 5 concludes with the direction an integrated infrastructure
research agenda might take given existing problems and barriers to overcoming them.
Appendices A and B present details on the Workshop process and organization. Appendix C
presents major research issues and questions that emerged from the three individual sessions
held at the Workshop and insights obtained from the participants’ and observers’ comments.
Appendices D and E contain a full list of participants and their backgrounds. Appendix F
contains a compilation of the short working papers provided by the participants as background
material for the Workshop.
REFERENCES
Civil Infrastructure Systems Task Group (CISTG), NSF, Civil Infrastructure Systems Research,
Workshop Report (Ken Chong, Chair). Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, 1992.
10
Civil Infrastructure Systems Task Group (CISTG), NSF, Civil Infrastructure Systems Research:
Strategic Issues. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, January 1993.
Costanza, R., Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability. New York,
NY: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Epple, D., (chair), “Public Infrastructure Research. A Public Infrastructure Research Agenda for
the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences,” Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University,
April 1993.
Grant, A.A. and A.C. Lemer, eds., In Our Own Backyard - Principles for Effective Improvement
of the Nation’s Infrastructure. Report of the National Research Council Building Research
Board. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1993.
National Council on Public Works Improvement (NCPWI), “Fragile Foundations: A Report on
America’s Public Works. Final Report to the President and Congress,” Washington, DC:
NCPWI, February 1988.
National Research Council, Measuring and Improving Infrastructure Performance, Washington,
DC: National Academy Press, 1995.
National Science Foundation, “Civil Infrastructure Systems. An Integrative Research Program.”
Washington, DC: NSF, March 1995.
Perry, D.C., ed., Building the Public City. The Politics, Governance, and Finance of Public
Infrastructure. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995.
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CHAPTER 2
URBAN CONCENTRATIONS
2.0 INTRODUCTION
The subject of urban concentrations was chosen to emphasize one of the most distinctive
characteristics of large cities and their internal concentrations of people, communities, public and
private agencies, buildings, transportation arteries, and utilities. Urban space is more often
defined by its confinement than its volume, and more likely to be characterized by its crowds
than its components. Historical circumstances have led to size and density characteristics that
distinguish urban centers from areas that traditionally have had lower densities. Size and density
heighten the need to understand the interactions between social and economic forces, physical
and environmental conditions, and the facilities and services that make urban activities possible.
Urban concentrations establish proximities that influence interactions, and establish both
opportunities and limitations that must be explored and clarified to deal effectively with
infrastructure.
The purpose of this chapter is to identify and describe the most promising research areas related
to infrastructure in dense urban areas. The following problem statement and questions provided
a preliminary direction to explore interdisciplinary research questions for the urban theme:
Problem Statement:
The density and scale of infrastructure in urban areas are largely a function of
historical developments. The scale and density pose unique problems and
constraints for infrastructure management. These problems emerge as a
consequence of the greater interferences and interactions that occur among
systems and their users.
Questions:
What are the best approaches to managing, maintaining, improving and
building new infrastructure under such crowded conditions?
What technologies and mechanisms are most appropriate?
How do we create public, private, policy-making, and technical partnerships?
Six topics were identified as areas with significant opportunities for research and development.
This chapter is therefore divided into six sections, each of which addresses one of the principal
research and development topics. The first section concentrates on Infrastructure Management,
which deals with the broad issues necessary to set directions and integrate the diverse technical,
social, and political factors necessary for improvements in crowded urban communities. The
second section is Application of Technology, which concentrates on how to implement existing
12
engineering and scientific knowledge, as well as future advances, given the social, economic,
and political context within which this implementation must occur. The third section is
Economics, Pricing, and Funding Mechanisms, which deals with the procedures of economic
forecasting, investments, and accounting. The fourth section, Partnerships, explores the means
of forging interrelationships that cut across institutional and cultural barriers in urban
concentrations and provide the foundation for integrated solutions. The fifth section is
Education, which examines how enlightenment, knowledge transfer, and training can promote
meaningful community participation in urban infrastructure improvement. The sixth section,
entitled Pilot Programs and Demonstration Projects, deals with programs that address the
community-specific features of infrastructure within urbanized areas and that demonstrate the
benefits of many of the research areas identified in this chapter.
2.1 INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT
Infrastructure management covers a broad range of programs that add value to the urban
environment, primarily through the integration of technical, political, organizational, cultural,
and human issues. In this report, infrastructure management applies to the description of needs
and research opportunities that are generic in character and that operate across many different
interfaces between infrastructure systems. It covers the management of the goal-formulation
process, data management issues, the coordination of rehabilitation, and analytical approaches
and techniques that support infrastructure management.
Goals
Understanding and addressing the social, economic, technical, and political interactions that
occur within our cities depends on the goals we are trying to achieve and the way in which these
goals are communicated and pursued by the organizations responsible for managing them. To
manage, the first order of business must be the establishment of goals. This can be achieved
only through multi-disciplinary, multi-agency, and other stakeholder participation. It is not
management by committee, but consensus building so that a unified front is presented and
maintained throughout the life cycle of all infrastructure investments. It involves the creation of
a strategic plan for each community with a systematic approach to goal-setting and structuring
incremental implementation programs.
A critical starting point is the establishment of national infrastructure goals to provide a
framework for community strategic planning. Such an activity could be managed by means of a
workshop, series of workshops, or special National Research Council (NRC) study with
participants representing many different disciplines, as well as public and private agencies. Both
regional and national formats should be considered. Consensus goals would be equivalent to a
mission statement, thereby providing a common identity, purpose, and agenda for coordinated
research and implementation.
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Data Management
Infrastructure Technologies Clearinghouse
There is a need for a technology clearinghouse so that worldwide information about
infrastructure technologies can be compiled and made accessible. The clearinghouse should
cover experience with the technologies, case histories of their application, and multi-disciplinary
information about the socioeconomic, environmental, and institutional aspects of these
technologies. Currently, the absence of a single entity that could provide centralized
management of information resources and the establishment of procedures for access to existing
information are barriers to the development of such a clearinghouse.
Research needs to be performed to create a mechanism for inventorying, evaluating, approving,
and utilizing the wealth of proven and unproven technologies in the United States and overseas
from all sources (universities, laboratories, utility companies, defense, communications and
space industries, the manufacturing and materials sectors, robotics, lasers, etc.).
Infrastructure Databases
The infrastructure assets in this country are monumental. Understanding the components,
configuration, and interaction of these assets is critical to our ability to provide and fully utilize
the infrastructure required for proper functioning of the urban environment. A major challenge
is to develop the integrated technology to collect, assemble, and interpret heterogeneous and
disparate data from many different agencies that often are in competition with each other. The
objective is to create comprehensive and reliable data acquisition and utilization systems for all
aspects of infrastructure from high-level strategic and public policy decision-making to planning
and implementing preventative maintenance programs.
Data acquisition, retrieval, and their effective applications have been long-standing problems.
The conversion to electronic databases in some ways makes the situation worse, since not all
electronic databases remain readable as technologies evolve. Research is needed to develop
systems that preserve data despite changes in program architectures and hardware
characteristics. Data protocols are needed to retain the use of older forms of data as newer
ones are developed.
There are serious obstacles to data sharing that are socially, economically, and politically based.
Deregulation may exacerbate these problems by increasing the proprietary nature of data because
of concerns about competition. The barriers to data integration have to be understood.
Strategies and programs are needed to show the benefits of data sharing. One way of showing
benefits is through the application of forecasting models that require data from diverse sources.
Models that merge demographic, economic, and facility inventory databases can be especially
helpful in guiding infrastructure investments and identifying coalitions to support physical
improvements.
Research needs to be conducted to identify the most critical data regarding infrastructure
decision-making and to find the most effective means of standardizing data and integrating
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databases for any geographically or spatially defined area. This is particularly critical for local
and regional levels. The appropriate formats, statistics, software, and hardware systems must be
explored, as well as longevity issues associated with perishable electronic formats, advances in
computer science and telecommunications, and compatibility with future hardware.
Integrated Implementation of GIS and Advanced Database Management
As discussed in other sections of this report, there is a need for cross-cutting implementation of
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and advanced information technologies. One way to
satisfy the need is to identify one or several areas within a large city for which a detailed and
fully integrated geographical database would be assembled and used for planning and
engineering purposes. The database organization would be directed at removing the cultural and
interagency barriers to the full exploitation of GIS in urban environments. The database would
involve physical infrastructure, including building stock, aerial, surface, and underground
transportation systems, water supply, wastewater conveyance, gas, electric power,
telecommunications, and other underground structures. The database also would include
information on human dimensions, such as population density, age distribution, commercial
factors, and household economic statistics. Such an effort would require a true multidisciplinary and integrated approach led by a local university in cooperation with municipal and
private sector planners and engineers. The political aspects of the data set and its visualization
could also be explored. Such a project or projects would forge university and industry
partnerships, and promote cooperation and industrial support that would be likely to continue
after completion of the pilot program.
Coordinated Infrastructure Rehabilitation
Research is needed on how to manage the promotion of urban infrastructure rehabilitation
projects that address the needs and priorities of all public and private agencies. Currently,
infrastructure renewal is often undertaken by a particular agency without in-depth evaluation or
input from other agencies or utilities affected by the construction. A major driver of
infrastructure rehabilitation is the repaving and improvement of streets undertaken by local
transportation departments. This restoration is rarely coordinated with the need to renovate or
replace aging water supply, gas and electric systems, or wastewater conveyance facilities. As a
result, infrastructure restoration follows a consistent pattern of restoration to maximize for a
single infrastructure system rather than to optimize for all systems affected. This ultimately has
detrimental economic consequences for urban residents and businesses who face continuous
disruption from multiple street openings.
Research needs to be performed on mechanisms to encourage common planning, interaction
models that help select procedures with least overall cost, and funding mechanisms for
coordinated renovation projects. Prediction of both performance and cost is a key element in
successful coordination. Research is also required on how to select the most critical locations
and neighborhoods for the coordinated projects. Thus, research is needed to design and manage
these coordinated systems.
Analytical Approaches to Support Infrastructure Management
15
Decision Sciences
Almost all decisions concerning infrastructure are driven by the political process. Accordingly,
decision-making must take advantage of a systems approach, recognizing that the urban setting
requires a comprehensive understanding of all systems involved. Care must be taken to avoid
just adding on another layer, thereby increasing rather than reducing complexity. Lessons from
the past use of systems analysis and the need to understand the political context in which systems
operate should be taken into account. The use of scenario planning, modeling, and presentation
technologies will help improve the decision-making process.
Research is needed to reduce the uncertainty (improving the credibility) of demand forecasting
and life-cycle cost analysis. Even when not reduced, uncertainties should be characterized and
the means (e.g., computer graphics) developed to explain them in diverse venues. Investment
decisions should be made on the basis of not only the initial cost of developing infrastructure,
but on the cost of maintenance as well.
Risk Assessment and Emergency Management
Because of the congested nature of urban infrastructure, difficulties experienced with one type of
facility frequently influence other facilities. Problems, therefore, can multiply and increase in
scale. A systematic review of major infrastructure accidents in New York City (O’Rourke,
1996) has shown that serious problems often can be traced to cast iron water main ruptures.
Local failures of this type are accompanied by flooding that may cause fire in electrical
substations, erosion of the asbestos coatings of steam lines, undermining of adjacent utilities and
foundations, and inundations of tunnels and underground rapid transit stations. Local failure,
therefore, may cascade into large and increasingly more complex systems, ultimately involving
community power supply and public transportation systems.
Managing the interaction of utilities, transportation facilities, and buildings within a crowded
urban environment requires advanced risk assessment decision-making tools to avoid severe and
potentially catastrophic events. The principles of hazard evaluation and process control
management (PCM) are well developed for complex industrial sites (e.g., Center for Chemical
Process Safety, 1992), and represent an opportunity for refinements and applications in urban
infrastructure management. Procedures of interest include hazard and operability analysis,
failure modes and effects analysis, and fault and event tree analyses.
Research needs to be conducted on the appropriate adaptation of PCM procedures in
conjunction with advanced probabilistic and reliability methods for urban infrastructure
systems. The objective is to evaluate the interrelationships among water supply, electric power,
natural gas, telecommunications, and transportation facilities for the purpose of identifying
potential hazards, forecasting the effects of local failures or accidents on network performance,
and locating the most critical areas where the proximity of key utilities carries the highest risk of
broader system failure. In this context, GIS is a technology ideally suited for mapping and
integrating the spatial and time-dependent interconnectivities of urban systems to create a
platform for maintenance, rehabilitation, and emergency preparedness.
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2.2 APPLICATION OF TECHNOLOGY
The diversity of infrastructure agencies and urban communities often creates barriers to
technology that are primarily social and political. New technology is needed to address mature
engineering and scientific systems that have been blocked from their most effective
implementation and to address emerging and future technologies.
Life-Extension Technologies
Physical infrastructure decisions often involve an evaluation of the four “Rs,” namely replace,
repair, retrofit, or retire. In urban environments, the options of replacement and retirement are
constrained because of congestion. New construction for replacement involves substantial
disruption of streets, adjacent utilities, public access, and local business, especially for
underground facilities. The resulting indirect and social costs of replacement are high.
Retirement may not be a viable option either, because the concentrated need for services requires
that critical facilities be sustained without significant interruption.
The options of repair and retrofit are favored in congested urban areas. Accordingly, there is a
need for aggressive, imaginative research and development in life-extension technologies that
are often unique to these situations. Such technologies involve new materials, relining pipelines
in-situ, trenchless construction, advanced condition monitoring, nondestructive testing, and
remote detection of underground obstructions and facilities. These technologies are covered in
considerable detail in an agenda for research that was developed recently by the National
Research Council (Gould and Lemer, 1994). That document should be used as a framework for
identifying appropriate research areas that concentrate primarily on the engineering and
scientific aspects of these new materials and procedures. An articulation of the social and
economic benefits and costs of these options should be incorporated into such research as well.
Technology Transfer
The challenge for open technology transfer is the compartmentalization that exists in the
infrastructure community. The difference between various public agencies as to goals,
responsibilities, budget limitations, political position and many other factors, along with the
competitive environment surrounding the private sector organizations in the infrastructure
community, make technology transfer and sharing extremely difficult. This challenge will be
compounded as deregulation, privatization, and shrinking resource allocations continue. There is
a realization among the players in civil infrastructure that knowledge is power, so considerable
energy is being spent guarding technology and data.
Several areas provide opportunities for technology adaptation or transfer to civil infrastructure:
•
Military technologies - Sophisticated listening technology to help evaluate the condition of
utility systems, remote sensing, robotics and remote-control guidance systems all have
potentially beneficial applications to urban infrastructure.
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•
Space technologies - The application of materials research and communications technologies
could have a positive impact upon infrastructure. The use of innovative materials, especially
those that have been tested and proved in aggressive mechanical and chemical aging
environments, can also offer significant advantages.
•
Energy technologies - Developments in both the public and private sector in energy
management could have a positive influence on urban infrastructure improvement.
Examples of energy technologies include improved combustion, better fuels, and
superconducting materials. Developments in co-generation already have had a profound
influence on infrastructure.
•
Foreign technologies - Significant advances in infrastructure technologies in other parts of
the world need to be introduced and implemented in the U.S.
Frequently, there are social, economic, and institutional barriers to the implementation of new
engineering and scientific technologies, especially if they were developed in other countries or in
other industrial sectors with different capitalization and user input requirements. Contracting
practices, product liability, and environmental regulations may retard or block innovation, and
more effective means of circumventing these institutional constraints must be explored. There
are also social and political impediments that must be evaluated, such as labor union acceptance,
training requirements, educational needs, and trade restrictions. These barriers present
challenges for integrated infrastructure research.
2.3 ECONOMICS, PRICING, AND FUNDING MECHANISMS
Infrastructure improvement requires investments from both the public and private sectors. To
establish a rational and effective framework for such investments, it is necessary to explore and
refine the economic basis for establishing the value of infrastructure. Research is needed to
clarify and improve our funding, accounting, investment, pricing, and test bedding (or
evaluation) mechanisms.
Funding Mechanisms
Innovative thinking needs to be applied in the area of funding mechanisms. Research should be
conducted to identify the best process for establishing a permanent funding source. Such an
infrastructure support base might be called an “entitlement” or “improvement” fund that would
promote a sense of ownership and responsibility on the part of the public. It would take the form
of a mandated or legislated sinking fund, replenished by tax and/or rate base contributions. The
Washington State Public Trust Fund (State of Washington, Public Works Board, October 1995)
provides a good example of such a program. Case studies of the Washington State and other
mandated sources of funding would help illuminate the process leading to their adoption, their
advantages and disadvantages, and the degree to which the public has been satisfied with the
outcome.
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Infrastructure Accounting
There is no clear source or location in the national budget for infrastructure investments. The
value of U.S. private and public infrastructure investment is often quoted within a wide range,
and cost statistics vary considerably from source to source, both for line items and aggregate
expense. The Bureau of Economic Statistics provides estimates of the national infrastructure
cost in terms of depreciated value at current prices. However, the gross, or undepreciated value,
may provide a more accurate gauge of the actual replacement cost.
Research is required to provide a consistent accounting system, and a means of not only
communicating the direct costs of physical infrastructure, but the indirect costs as well. Satellite
accounting systems have been developed for environmental costs, and similar systems would be
highly beneficial for infrastructure. The accounting systems must be able to combine public and
private valuations.
Public/Private Investments
The infrastructure works best when public and private investments can be combined to leverage
capital outlays and secure an environment that both stimulates commercial development and
enhances the quality of urban life. Important projects can only be initiated on special occasions,
because urban construction costs are so high. Public/private consortia are needed so that the
benefits derived from new infrastructure will help pay for its placement. Research is needed to
explore interfaces with private capital, and to develop mechanisms for coordinated investments.
Fundamental questions need to be addressed, such as how to plan and price infrastructure with
enough flexibility to accommodate change and uncertainties in demand. Financing strategies are
required to coordinate urban transportation systems with schools, utility services, and
commercial development to maintain the economic viability of the communities using the
transportation systems. Forecasts of demographic trends need to be coordinated with
investments to ensure that the rates of change are not faster than cities can accommodate.
Infrastructure development can spark urban regeneration that may not stop demographic trends,
but can modify them so that cities evolve from present to future roles productively.
Pricing and Productivity
Infrastructure costs are dynamic. They are subject to daily and annual fluctuations, which are in
turn subject to long-term economic trends. The electric utility industry and many mass transit
authorities, for example, set prices according to peak demand. Similar strategies, as well as
automated variable metering methodologies to manage peak and low demands, need to be
explored for other sectors of the infrastructure. Research is needed to develop a more
comprehensive understanding of pricing. Guidance is required for the adaptation of pricing
strategies as a function of key technical and social community characteristics.
An important component of the cost and pricing of infrastructure is the nature of the productivity
of infrastructure services. As the global economy becomes more integrated, demands on local
urban productivity increase. This, in turn, raises fundamental questions about the relationships
among physical infrastructure, public vs. private ownership, and economic productivity.
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Research is needed to develop indices, or measurement systems, for productivity and its
relationship to infrastructure costs. Developments that make the best use of their human capital
base should be encouraged.
Test Bedding
The means of testing economic and social models for infrastructure improvement need to be
refined. One way of accomplishing this is by test bedding, in which an experiment is conducted
on a relatively small-scale and controlled basis. Recent economics research has shown test
bedding to be an effective means of validating or qualifying economic models and forecasts.
Test bedding applied to economic, public support, and funding models is encouraged.
2.4 PARTNERSHIPS
It is in the interests of both the private and public sectors to share the responsibility for system
enhancement in order to improve civil infrastructure systems. Neither can do it alone. Perhaps
the most critical aspect of achieving success with infrastructure problems is establishing
working, collaborative partnerships. The need for and the nature of partnerships for
infrastructure in urban concentrations is likely to differ from characteristics of partnerships in
less dense areas. Partnerships are needed to deal with the complexity of infrastructure by
bringing together all affected parties to allocate resources effectively, enhance collective action
for problem solving, focus attention on solutions to problems, gain economies of scale, improve
technology transfer, and achieve system effectiveness and service quality.
Establishing an effective partnership requires a recognition that it will be necessary to work in an
interdisciplinary environment involving social, technical, administrative, political, legal,
economic, and environmental factors. Partnering requires clear goal definition and a common
language. The partners will need to have knowledge of system processes, accept the high
transaction costs associated with interdisciplinary activities, be willing to share risks, costs, and
benefits, and work to overcome communication problems. Such a partnership will require
effective management and leadership that is sensitive to technical, political, organizational,
cultural, and human issues. The partnership must yield benefits to the partners, be collaborative
rather than merely an exchange relationship, and be flexible enough to allow for the
development of interpersonal relationships, organizational learning, and technology transfer.
Developing effective partnerships is a significant human systems problem which requires that all
participants understand the various elements critical to effective system performance, such as the
communication system, decision-making processes, power and authority relationships, and
equity issues of who pays and who benefits.
There are many barriers to the development of effective partnerships among different
organizations managing complex infrastructure systems. An important reason for the barriers is
the significant differences that exist between private and public sector organizations involved in
civil infrastructure. These include fundamental differences in goals, purposes for existence,
cultures, funding and accountability mechanisms, acquisition regulations, human resource
management rules and procedures, and competition for power and influence within a community.
20
Substantial work has been done by the business and management communities on organizational
behavior that can provide a useful starting point in exploring and improving the organizational
relationships associated with infrastructure. Moss Kanter (1994), for example, has identified
eight criteria that must be met to establish interorganizational collaboration. They are
individual/organizational excellence, importance, interdependence, investment, information,
integration, institutionalization, and integrity. Such criteria are relevant for infrastructure
partnerships, particularly the criteria pertaining to interdependence, information, and integration.
Such criteria provide a framework for developing effective partnerships, and suggest several
areas where infrastructure research could have a significant impact.
Decision-Making
A clear understanding of decision-making is a prerequisite to establishing partnering
mechanisms. Research is needed to develop simulation tools, including heuristics, that will help
create an overall architecture for civil infrastructure systems based upon partnerships. The
decision-making process must include a technically comprehensive understanding of physical
infrastructure systems, as well as their functions and interrelationships, the environment (i.e.,
social, political, economic, legal and managerial), and the processes by which they are built,
operated, and maintained.
Communication
Communication is an obvious and critical aspect of effective partnering and the determination of
the feasibility of partnering. Research is needed to develop methods, models, and tools to
facilitate communication and to understand the risks, costs, and benefits associated with civil
infrastructure systems. Such methods, models, and tools are important in defining system
problems, assessing the effectiveness of alternative solutions to the problems, and building
support among important stakeholder groups, as well as in facilitating the establishment of
common goals.
Interrelationships
Research is needed to define the knowledge, skills, and attributes required to manage complex
civil infrastructure systems efficiently and effectively through partnering. This requires
development of knowledge about the roles of the players in the system (private and public),
methods of financing, incentives/disincentives for developing stakeholder support, and means to
reduce the transaction costs associated with interdisciplinary teams. It also involves an
understanding of the political process and its role in determining interactions among players in
the system. Research is needed to establish an improved understanding of how the political
process determines the acceptable level of service quality (i.e., how tradeoffs are made between
risk, cost, and benefit), how uncertainties are incorporated into the public policy debate, and
how incentives can be used to develop necessary constituency support and overcome the
concerns of blocking coalitions.
Deregulation
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Research is needed to examine the impacts of deregulation on the improvement of productivity
and service delivery, reliability and maintainability, how deregulation affects public-private
sector relationships, and the potential impact of antitrust laws on collaborative activity.
2.5 EDUCATION
In simple terms, infrastructure may be thought of as the property and services we share in
common. It is somewhat contradictory, therefore, that the public at-large rarely regards its
ownership of these properties and services either as a unifying or governing principle.
Infrastructure is taken for granted, and most often it is regarded as an entitlement. People expect
services to be provided with little perception of the complexity, costs, and political interactions
associated with them. The notion of ownership implies responsibility, which in turn requires an
understanding of the importance, physical characteristics, and the political support mechanisms
to sustain and improve common property and services. The tension between ownership and
entitlement underscores one of the most basic and pervasive needs for improving civil
infrastructure systems, namely a strategy and implementation plan for educating the public.
K-12 Education
Perhaps the most successful way to change public awareness is to focus on the education of
children. For example, there has been notable success in primary school education with regard
to one of the critical urban infrastructure problems - that of solid waste management through
recycling. Many U.S. children are now taught in school about the importance of recycling.
They, in turn, help promote recycling procedures and awareness at home, thereby involving and
educating their families.
Significant opportunities exist for developing primary school programs and educational tools to
create a more adequate understanding of the infrastructure. The work needs to be
interdisciplinary so that the appropriate technical parameters are conveyed in a way that is easy
to comprehend and that stimulates interest. Teaching programs need to be developed from
collaborations among educators, scientists, engineers, sociologists, and psychologists.
Interactive computer graphics would help with visualization and provide opportunities for selfdirected learning. Community awareness and a sense of responsibility could be promoted by
field trips to water treatment plants, power plants, recycling centers, bridges, tunnels, historic
buildings, and construction sites.
The Role of Telecommunications in Education
Public education will be transformed in the next generation by advances in telecommunications.
Telecommunications are actually a type of infrastructure. As such, they not only serve as a
medium for conveying information and images about other infrastructure, but as an illustration
of the systems that comprise our built and virtual environments.
22
Innovative, even radical thinking needs to focus on how to utilize telecommunications to
promote more accurate and accessible information about our physical and political systems.
Collaborations of social and political scientists, public works specialists, engineers from all
engineering disciplines, and multi-media experts are necessary to establish an intellectual core
for public education that utilizes advanced telecommunications for more effective visualization
of infrastructure complexity, size, and interrelationships. Research is needed on how to form
collaborations among different specialists and institutions to promote the effective use of
telecommunications in the educational process.
Cross-Education of Utilities
One of the barriers to technological implementation is that most cities are served by several
different utilities that compete for the same space, but do not commonly exchange information
and do not share common corporate or cultural reward systems. There is virtually no lateral
development of technology; most technological advances are vertical within a particular utility
group. For example, a gas or telephone company will develop and apply a new life-extension
technology. Because there are barriers to information interchange, the life-extension technology
is not used to reduce construction disruption related to work performed by the other utilities. As
a consequence, the benefits of the technology are constrained and may not be realized because
there is no lateral integration among the other companies.
One way to reduce the barriers is by cross-educational programs using seminars and workshops
in which several different utilities in the same city present the engineering methods and materials
they have developed. Creating a formal mechanism for sharing information promotes the
dissemination of new technology and provides a better understanding of common problems. The
educational programs could be organized by local universities, which would provide expertise in
education, engineering, science, social, and economic disciplines to stimulate the exchange of
information among utilities. Information trading could occur in areas such as life-extension
technology, construction procedures, computerized mapping, database management, and
community interactions. These educational programs would be directed at a work force
comprised of managers, engineers, and representatives of labor. To provide for educational
coverage that extends to the street level, creative and fresh thinking must be applied to promote
both lateral integration of technology across different utilities and vertical integration within the
work force of each individual company.
2.6 PILOT PROGRAMS AND DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS
One of the distinctive features of infrastructure is its local and community-specific character. A
recent study conducted by the National Research Council (Grant and Lemer, 1993) emphasized
that infrastructure is built and operated locally, and that change must begin at the local level.
New mechanisms have to be developed to promote a dialogue and foster education in the work
place and among communities. Strategies are needed to remove the institutional barriers to
multi-disciplinary cooperation as well as to promote the adoption and implementation of
advanced technologies. An important part of an integrated approach is to develop creative pilot
23
programs. These would be implemented at specific urban sites, in which different parts of the
public and private sectors engage in the promotion of advanced technologies and demonstrate
that such programs are not only successful, but can stimulate the adoption of similar programs
elsewhere. Potential pilot programs could focus on improved use of GIS, advanced database
management, decision support systems for social and technological problems, and community
participation in setting local infrastructure goals.
REFERENCES
Center for Chemical Process Safety, Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures, 2nd Ed. New
York, NY: American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1992.
Moss Kanter, R., “Collaborative Advantage: The Art of Alliances,” Harvard Business Review,
July-Aug. 1994.
Grant, A.A. and A.C. Lemer, eds., In Our Own Backyard - Principles for Effective Improvement
of the Nation’s Infrastructure. Report of the National Research Council Building Research
Board. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1993.
Gould, J.P. and A.C. Lemer, eds., Toward Infrastructure Improvement: An Agenda for
Research. Report of the National Research Council Building Research Board. Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press, 1994.
O’Rourke, T.D., “Prospectus for Lifelines and Infrastructure Research,” The Art and Science of
Structural Engineering. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. Pp. 37-40.
State of Washington, Public Works Board. “Legislative Report: 1996 Loan Priorities of the
Public Works Trust Fund.” Olympia, WA: State of Washington, October 1995.
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CHAPTER 3
INFRASTRUCTURE AND INTERURBAN AND SUBURBAN NETWORKS
3.0 INTRODUCTION
The theme of “Infrastructure and Interurban and Suburban Networks” was interpreted to refer
to infrastructure systems suitable for low density and sprawling suburban areas and their
associated conditions, and the approaches that may be effective in these areas. It was assumed
that infrastructure issues relating to these areas recognizably overlap with those pertaining to
urban concentrations. Nevertheless, addressing similar problems at different geographic scales
is likely to reinforce many of the issues addressed in the Workshop.
The initial “mission statement” was the following:
Infrastructure networks connect suburbs to cities, cities to other cities, and
suburbs to one another. Suburban/exurban area populations often exceed
urban populations, are often growing at a faster rate, and are characterized by
lower densities. The political and institutional issues of these areas differ from
those of urban areas, requiring unique coordinative mechanisms such as
regionalization. These conditions present infrastructure problems and invoke
processes that differ from problems of urban areas, associated with more
extensive distributional issues for services and facilities. In addition, if these
processes are not understood and managed appropriately, these areas could
experience infrastructure problems of the intensity and scale that urban areas
have experienced.
The issue of integrated infrastructure research in less dense urban areas was approached, first, by
means of characterizing the spatial and temporal dimensions of growth patterns and trends in
those areas and the various aspects of integration that could potentially apply. Then, the
relationship of these patterns to the demand and supply of infrastructure and models used to
conceptualize demand and supply was explored as a basis for articulating research topics.
Demand and supply issues are particularly salient in less dense areas for several reasons. First,
new building construction is likely to occur at first without any change to existing infrastructure;
that is, existing capacity, if it is available, is absorbed within a short time. Second, areas of
lower density tend to have relatively fewer restrictions on development than more dense urban
concentrations. Thus, market mechanisms are likely to be relatively more important in
determining supply and demand relationships under these circumstances than in denser areas.
The emphasis was to focus on the larger picture, however, and to seek issues that could benefit
from further exploration, rather than to define precise case studies and identify specific failings
in the infrastructure field.
25
While the mission of the Workshop did not extend beyond the U.S., conditions prevailing in
developing countries were recognized as useful in shedding some additional light on
infrastructure development choices, convertibility, and appropriate technology in the U.S.
3.1 BASIC CONDITIONS
Basic conditions of interurban and suburban networks frame how one analyzes infrastructure.
Two of the conditions that address the overarching issues of infrastructure development are the
space and time dimensions of American cities as they change from the patterns of the early 20th
century and move into the 21st century, propelled by economic, social, political, and
technological forces. The third is integration - the general theme of the Workshop - which can be
interpreted in many ways with respect to less dense areas. Its relevance to the infrastructure
debate depends upon which dimension is adopted.
Spatial Structure
The spatial structure of metropolitan areas shapes and is shaped by infrastructure. The structure
of many metropolitan areas is in the process of changing (or has changed already). The
traditional model is that of single-core oriented infrastructure systems, and may no longer
accurately portray today’s metropolitan areas. The traditional metropolitan areas - not to
mention compact historical cities - are turning into “urban fields” overlaid with service networks.
The recent past and emerging conditions of urbanized settlements suggest several future spatial
scenarios:
A. The Monocenter/multipurpose/core-oriented structure with concentric development having
progressively lower density is the traditional construct that does not really exist any more, except
as a historical remnant. The universal accessibility provided by the automobile and the
electronic communications revolution have doomed this pattern.
B. Undifferentiated sprawl that devours the landscape and results in very low-density
development is extremely difficult and expensive to service. Much of this exists, but its
continued growth should be minimized, controlled or managed, depending upon the development
policy. The overwhelming majority of residents in these areas like this pattern very much.
C. Networks of nodes and special activity districts appear to be the current trend. Such
networks respond to contemporary and future locational forces. The nodes are edge cities, strip
commercial developments, shopping centers, office parks, university campuses, medical centers,
amusement parks, etc., rather than fully developed urban cores. This pattern might be
unavoidable and may be the best alternative given that this pattern allows some organization and
clustering. Infrastructure systems serving these areas would have to be reformed in a
fundamental way as well.
D. Combination of patterns would prevail for some time, of course, as the general transition to
networks with nodes takes place.
26
Which infrastructure patterns should emerge depends upon which scenario one assumes will
arise. If Scenario C dominates, then a series of implications for infrastructure provision should
prevail. For example:
•
If dispersal continues, individual stand-alone systems become feasible and appropriate.
•
If the nodes are strong enough, organized communal transportation systems may be possible,
but probably only between nodes.
•
If low-density residential areas persist and expand, the dependency of people on the private
automobile to get to jobs and shops will have to be considered, and the consequences of this
dependency on mobility and congestion will need to be studied.
Research Needs:
•
What factors influence the outcome of each scenario?
•
Which scenario will dominate future small and large American urban settlements, and under
what conditions? Which models can be used to address this question?
•
What are the overall (policy) and specific (programmatic) infrastructure development
implications associated with each scenario?
These issues are basic to everything that follows. Unless they are clarified, planning may occur
for the wrong systems, for the wrong needs, at the wrong time, or within the wrong urban
environment.
Time Frame
The time frame within which infrastructure development and utilization takes place is an
important dimension. It is of particular concern today when many events and considerations
become accelerated.
A fluid and changing situation prevails in the spatial and demographic sectors of American
cities. Even such considerations as whether districts grow by natural increase or in-migration
have a significant impact on infrastructure planning and management.
Rapidly changing needs and expectations, which are also reflected in changing norms and
standards, have to be contrasted with a basic rigidity, fixed character, and long useful life of
infrastructure facilities. Systems over 100 years old (brick sewers in New York City, for
example) are not unusual. Most facilities are difficult to modify: only their collapse typically
initiates significant and responsive modifications.
Forecasting of specific needs to identify when and how fast a particular settlement pattern will
emerge is not particularly reliable. It is difficult to predict all of the features that determine
27
infrastructure designs, such as future spatial patterns, demographic composition and population
distribution, life styles and service demands, and technological capabilities.
Given uncertainty about the future, a most desirable characteristic of systems should be
flexibility. Under an ideal situation, services should be adaptable and easy to modify. The
nature of the fixed physical plant, however, does not allow this to happen easily. There are
exceptions. The electric power industry has been quite successful in responding to changing
needs within the last few decades. The communications industry has coped with major and
continuing changes by successively scrapping previous systems and replacing them with new
technology.
The concerns of adaptability also extend to buildings and their interior service systems. Office
functions, in particular, seek “smart” buildings, thereby threatening to leave behind as obsolete a
very large building stock. There are, however, specialists who believe that effective conversions
can be achieved. Similar reuse or abandonment issues arise in connection with office, retail, and
industrial buildings of an earlier era.
Research Needs:
•
Appropriate methods for forecasting needs, expectations, and demands need to be identified
and applied in the infrastructure field-based in part upon the rate and pattern of
development.
•
Concepts of flexibility, adaptability, and easy replacement need to be explored with respect
to specific infrastructure systems in order to accommodate uncertainty.
Integration
Integration is almost always seen as a desirable feature. It is a powerful term in our society, and
it is repeatedly said that infrastructure systems should be integrated. But beyond the conceptual
level, what exactly should be integrated, at what stage, to what degree, for what purpose, and
with what expected results? These are critical questions for infrastructure development.
Traditionally, infrastructure systems were built and managed separately (except perhaps for
public transportation systems). This seems to work, but probably a price is paid in inefficiency.
There is not much of a grassroots demand for far-reaching reforms in this sector. In general,
there are few plans for long-range needs.
Although the concept of integration was introduced in Section 1.1, a number of types or levels of
integration are important to consider and reiterate in the context of less dense urban areas. These
are the following:
A. Geographic. This aspect of integration refers to infrastructure systems of each type that are
fully connected, covering large territories. Presumably, efficiencies of scale and responsive
operational management would be achieved. The best current examples are electric power grids
and regional rail systems. The overall principle is fine, except that there are some caveats.
28
Local problems may cascade into large crashes because everything is interconnected; large size
may not be the most effective approach in some instances.
B. Functional. This type of integration (for example, combining several different utilities or
services into a single unit) is not easy. Within transportation infrastructure, functional integration
is easier to accomplish than between utilities and transportation, and among utilities. What does
a water supply system, for example, have in common functionally with a transportation network?
There are some possibilities, however. Garbage can be burned to generate power, for example.
Facilities can enhance one another: in the City of Phoenix a solid-waste transfer station was
integrated with an environmental education center - both support one another. In addition, the
most obvious possibility may be the simple utilization of a common right-of-way, which might
be advanced to the level of providing joint-use utility tunnels. This is integration at least in the
sense of physical proximity. As in the case of geographic integration above, functional
integration may occur at the expense of overall system safety and make failures far more
catastrophic.
C. Information and Knowledge Exchange. Information and knowledge should be exchanged
among systems, even with each agency maintaining its current administrative independence.
This effort can be guided through voluntary cooperation, to make sure that conflicts and
dangerous situations are avoided and that operations do not disrupt each other. The advantage is
that information about social and economic issues could be integrated with technical engineering
considerations for infrastructure.
D. Integrated Management. This may be a theoretical utopia, difficult to consider within the
current political situation. There may also be antitrust implications. However, this concept is
something to think about.
E. Conceptual. Infrastructure considerations should be integrated into the overall thinking and
planning about how people live, allocate resources, and develop communities. Thus, integration
applies conceptually to the most basic aspects of society, including how economic development
and land use can be integrated with infrastructure. Service needs and capabilities are basic
issues, and should not be added as an afterthought once everything else is decided.
Research Needs:
•
Exactly how inefficient are our segregated systems? To what extent is this a problem in light
of what is realistically possible, that is, combining large, complex systems that already exist?
•
What level of integration is specifically appropriate in different types of communities and
urban situations? How far do we want to go with integration?
•
What mechanisms should be developed or enhanced to achieve desirable organization?
29
3.2 DEMAND ISSUES AND CHARACTERISTICS
Introduction
Demand for infrastructure services is determined by population size and character, consumption
patterns, and features of supply. The provision of such services is influenced strongly by the
spatial structure of metropolitan areas, among other factors, particularly as experienced in
expanding suburban territories. The integrative factors applicable to infrastructure demand in
suburban markets differ from those applicable to urban markets. In less dense areas, individuals
can rely upon their own individual systems rather than larger shared networks. As such, one sees
a disintegration of infrastructure systems rather than an integration. In the electric power
industry, for example, new technologies are reinforcing this pattern of disintegration through the
creation of mini-power plants, solar power, etc., distributed in many different places rather than
through large transmission lines from central power plants.
A number of factors, described below, potentially influence the demand for infrastructure in
interurban and suburban network areas. These include cost, technology (e.g., electronic
communications, which facilitate telecommuting), and deregulation of infrastructure systems
(e.g., electric and gas utilities).
Cost and Demand
The cost of infrastructure service provision in American cities and the price levied are significant
factors that potentially influence demand. There are debates about how costs are defined, and in
particular, what the true cost vs. the actual charges are and the role of subsidies. However, the
role of cost in determining demand is usually considered important, though exactly how
important and under what circumstances, is often debated.
We are a wasteful society, even though the exact level of excess consumption and “leakage” of
various types is not accurately known. A certain quality of service is expected, and the response
has to be fully satisfactory; however, in most instances consumption does not appear to be
constrained by price. There are problems with measuring the exact demand, but cost factors
currently do not enter into the discussion regarding some infrastructure systems - they do not
affect consumer behavior, since they are not priced to do so. This suggests that services have
been and are seen as easily affordable. This is in part due to the fact that the costs of
infrastructure are not internalized into its price. One physical result is spatial dispersal, with
inherent inefficiency.
Reliability, timeliness, and instantaneous quality response dominate the pricing criteria for
facilities. Subsidies are involved in some instances (highways, reportedly), but the true amounts
and their consequences are not fully documented. It is not clear how these subsidies should be
evaluated, and whether or not they serve a useful social purpose.
The long-range implications are threatening if services are not valued and priced according to
full cost considerations. That should include space consumption, possible environmental
degradation, and other secondary effects. (Long Island, New York , for example, is experiencing
30
constraints on its economic future due to unmanageable traffic congestion and depletion of its
ground water table.) Maintenance considerations are also not adequately included in the
decision-making sequence that prices infrastructure.
It might also be suggested that by tightening up the level of infrastructure charges, a more
efficient (and higher density) development pattern would eventually be achieved.
Research Needs:
•
To what extent would charges affect consumer demand for infrastructure?
•
Are there subsidies? Who provides them and to what extent? Do they influence demand?
•
What are the true or societal costs for various infrastructure services? Are all or most items
accounted for?
•
Should questions about whether or not costs are reflected in prices and whether prices
influence demand be addressed if users can afford these services and few complaints are
heard?
Other Factors Influencing Demand
Infrastructure demand may be influenced by factors other than cost. Many argue that when the
cost of infrastructure is small relative to available income and/or the cost of living, that cost is
not a significant factor in determining demand. Other factors such as social and cultural issues
may be more significant, along with perceptions of the quality of the service, including its
reliability, whether consumers understand the price, how the costs are distributed, whether or not
the service is regarded as a public necessity, overriding preferences for where people want to
live, and the spatial distribution of facilities relative to the spatial distribution of demand.
Research Needs:
•
Non-price oriented factors influencing demand should be identified.
3.3 SUPPLY ISSUES
Introduction
Supply responses are still dominated by systems that follow the traditional formats for
infrastructure supply and provide the same service levels in largely the same way. Within lowdensity suburban districts, geographic integration vs. stand-alone services are becoming
important concerns. Maintaining historical configurations for networks of infrastructure
facilities when other parameters are changing is also continually being questioned.
31
Three issues were discussed with respect to infrastructure supply: (1) the diversity of
infrastructure supply networks and the impacts of such diversity on the integration decision, (2)
the valuation of infrastructure supply, and (3) the evaluation of infrastructure’s return on
investment.
Diversity of Infrastructure Supply Networks
Suburban communities and communities linked through interurban infrastructure networks are
diverse in age and physical condition, size and spatial structure, political and institutional
jurisdiction, management protocols, and degree of systematic land-use controls and development
planning.
The proven and emerging technologies for provision of infrastructure services are also diverse,
ranging from large, centralized distribution systems, to small, modular, and self-contained
single-unit alternatives. These technologies differ, often considerably, in cost-per-unit of service
provided, effectiveness in providing service, maintenance requirements, technical expertise
required to install and maintain, and length of effective service life. Making good selections of
technologies for the provision of infrastructure services within or among suburban communities,
and decisions about the maintenance of those systems have thus become complex endeavors,
even for those communities with experienced technical personnel. For most small communities,
such decisions may be overwhelming. The availability of proven guidelines for the selection of
infrastructure service technologies could return enormous benefits of efficiency to communities
across the country.
Research Needs:
•
Under what conditions, and for what technologies, is integrated provision of infrastructure
services superior to separate services?
Effective Valuation of Civil Infrastructure Supply
Individuals responsible for scheduling maintenance projects, contracting, etc. are in need of
methodologies that can enable them to address complex logistical problems such as setting
priorities for projects across multiple infrastructure sectors (roads, bridges, various support
facilities, etc.), assuring equity in provision of infrastructure maintenance, identifying the best
repair/rehabilitation technology for a particular infrastructure distress, anticipating potential
conditions of infrastructure failure, and providing overall resource management.
The goal of most decisionmakers in managing this process is to achieve the greatest overall
improvement in infrastructure condition within the constraints imposed by limited resources.
Yet, a clear and consistent framework for monitoring infrastructure condition and the consistent
values and goals that underly such a framework is generally not available. For instance, a
framework based on the current value of infrastructure investment would be a valuable tool at
the project programming level, as well as for use by governmental administrations and other
institutions responsible for infrastructure planning and investment. This dynamic infrastructure
“balance sheet” would consist of extensive infrastructure inventories such as those commonly
32
being developed using geographic information systems (GIS), condition-assessment models for
various infrastructure elements, and appropriate economic valuation functions. The integration
of these components into an effective decision support system that provides clear and consistent
infrastructure value profiles would be of significant use to infrastructure decision-makers and
managers. It might help mitigate problems of consistency in infrastructure management in the
face of local political changes.
Research Needs:
•
How can the value of in-place infrastructure be determined properly and monitored in such a
way that rehabilitation/repair decisions result in the most efficient use of available resources
through multiple planning periods?
Evaluation of Infrastructure’s Return on Investment
Economic information on the return from an investment in infrastructure should be an important
element in decisions about infrastructure investments. Arguments for repair, replacement, or
improvement of bridges or for new bridges are often couched in terms of the number of bridges
in need of repair or traffic delays caused by inadequate bridge structures. The economic losses
from delays or hazards and the economic gains from improvement are rarely stated because the
means to estimate these losses or gains are inadequately developed. An argument can be made
for infrastructure improvements, individually as well as in aggregate, by stating the returns on
infrastructure investments that incorporate intangible benefits. Hence, the development of
methodologies to estimate the economic return on investment in infrastructure comprehensively
is a potential area for research. Such methodologies ought to be developed by teams composed
of both engineers and economists because of the need for knowledge from both disciplines.
Research Needs:
•
How can the rate of return on infrastructure investment be determined by interdisciplinary
teams in a way that will improve decisions about future investment?
Robust Decision-Making for Infrastructure Supply
New investments in infrastructure supply are predicated on existing and projected demands for
service, but projected demands for power, water supply, and for traffic of all sorts have much
uncertainty. Growth in metropolitan areas is subject not only to economic conditions, but to
other investment decisions, including private decisions on housing districts, shopping centers,
and industrial developments that are not known in advance. The local use of the automobile may
be subject to some policy decisions as well as the price of gasoline.
Research is needed to provide methodologies for robust infrastructure decision-making about
supply; that is, for decisions that do well under many scenarios of demand growth and regional
development and that do not fail to satisfy demand under extreme circumstances. Disciplinary
areas that can contribute to the creation of such methodologies are numerous and include
33
systems analysis and operations research, regional science and planning, micro-economics,
mathematics, and statistics.
Research Needs:
•
How can decision-making about infrastructure supply be made more robust in the face of
uncertain information and constantly changing social, demographic, and economic
conditions?
3.4 MODELS FOR SUPPLY AND DEMAND (including data needs)
Limitations of Current Supply and Demand Modeling
Models of supply and/or demand, so critical to the analysis of infrastructure investment, must be
made relevant to the concerns of decisionmakers and their customers (markets). Current models,
based upon concepts of expanded highway supply, developed in the 1960s and refined ever
since, do not necessarily reflect today’s concerns with new infrastructure development.
Current demand models are based primarily on minimizing user costs under relatively simple
conditions: mainly the relative costs of competing modes. Supply models come into play in
response to network assignment, again based upon user costs. Supply models seldom serve as
mode-choice constraints, and provide little on the dynamics of choice needed to evaluate new
approaches (e.g., Intelligent Transportation Systems) toward meeting user needs under
complicated travel scenarios. For example, use of real-time variable message signs must assist
in convincing someone to park at a remote lot and take commuter rail. How can we plan for the
success of such a system? Current models are not up to the task. Data and variables are missing
that describe choices made by the new generation of users, and including choices influenced by
the type of trip and activity, comfort of their vehicle, and knowledge of transit, its connections,
and reliability. This is only one of a number of complex examples deriving demand from
changing patterns of work, shopping, individual and household activities, substitutes for travel,
and rapidly changing land use and energy costs. A new generation of models, developed through
interdisciplinary efforts, is necessary to address both the new “intelligent” infrastructure, new
model characteristics, and new cultures of the consumers.
Research Needs:
•
What are the new structural forms for transportation infrastructure supply and demand
models, and how do they appropriately reflect the complexities of new demographics,
changing patterns and needs of travel, and new “intelligent” model characteristics?
•
How can supply/demand investment models be formulated and presented for public and
decisionmaker review and input?
•
What academic disciplines must be involved to develop and teach new models, and what
levels of support, including utilization of new data sources, will be necessary?
34
•
As technology changes the demand for certain infrastructure, what models (or
enhancements) are needed for infrastructure planning and demand prediction?
•
What factors influence the integration (or disintegration) of civil infrastructure?
•
Is the prediction of the maintenance and sustainability of infrastructure supply linked to
demand prediction, and if so, how?
Participatory Modeling
Successful participatory modeling exercises in general, and those aimed at improving
infrastructure related decision-making in particular, have been largely ad hoc in nature. While
significant benefits from using these models have been documented, they are traditionally
expensive and time-consuming to develop, often requiring extensive location-specific data, and
they are almost always configured to reflect unique jurisdictional relationships. Model design
and development do not consider the need to adapt the model to other decision-making
scenarios.
As a result, the transfer of such technologies to different decision-making settings (different
communities, different sectors, etc.) is rarely attempted, and even more rarely evaluated in any
systemic fashion. Yet the benefits from doing so could be significant. Furthermore, such
technology transfer is important for promoting further modeling innovation of this kind.
Research Needs:
•
How can innovative participatory modeling technologies aid the design and development of
effective infrastructure management strategies?
•
How can new modeling technologies be used to enhance communication among and between
infrastructure stakeholders having different constituencies?
•
How can successful participatory modeling technologies be developed to be used in settings,
and to address problems for which they were not originally developed?
3.5 INSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS
Success in implementation of infrastructure systems -- as always -- depends very much on the
institutional mechanisms available. There appears to be a serious schism between the types of
organizations responsible for utility services and the regular bodies of government.
Definition and Nature of Infrastructure Institutions
The integrated management of U.S. infrastructure is essential to our nation’s economic,
environmental, and social well-being. Infrastructure is more than a physical phenomenon.
35
Infrastructure is “animated” through institutions. Our ability to preserve, expand, and integrate
civil infrastructure depends upon cooperation among a wide variety of infrastructure planning
and management institutions. By “institutions” we mean what Hass, Keohane and Levy (1993:
pp. 4-5) have characterized as
persistent and connected sets of rules and practices that prescribe behavioral
roles, constrain activity, and shape expectations. They may take the form of
bureaucratic organizations, regimes, or conventions and other informal practices.
It is convenient to use the word “institutions” to cover both organizations and
rules, since clusters of rules are typically linked to organizations, and it is often
difficult to disentangle their effects.
Institutions can be characterized in terms of numerous empirical factors, all of which impact
their ability to interact and coordinate. Analysis of institutions can be informed with concepts
and methods drawn from political science, sociology, and anthropology.
A profound skepticism taints public perceptions of existing political and economic institutions
whether concerned with infrastructure or other issues. It is an article of conventional wisdom
that government agencies tend to over-regulate and over-spend, creating a dual burden on
American society. Politicians and bureaucrats are seen as lacking the appropriate incentives for
problem solving; indeed, they are viewed as subject to perverse, election-cycle thinking that
leads to aggravation of social issues requiring a long term perspective. In addition, politicians
and infrastructure agencies too frequently opt for large, single-purpose projects with
questionable cost/benefit justification. Coordination among infrastructure agencies is viewed as
weak.
There is obviously great need to characterize better the actions and motivations of institutions
that manage and plan our national infrastructure. This need to understand is complicated by the
fact that infrastructure management and planning institutions (IMPI) display a great deal of
empirical and historical variation. IMPIs can range in size from national to local; some are
governmental, some quasi-public, and some strictly private. Some IMPIs respond to a legislated
mission, others are driven by juridical imprimatur, and still others by executive or profit-based
dictates. Other variables that influence how an IMPI will operate and interact with other
organizations include:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
leadership type/leadership term
geographic scope
scope and specificity of mission
legal status charter
tradition/mandate for public participation
financing and operating capital (appropriations, taxes, fees, etc.)
stakeholder demographics
organizational structure
Research Needs:
36
A comparative inventory, or taxonomy, of infrastructure institutions will help provide a database
relevant to the study of infrastructure institutions. The inventory would categorize specific
organizations in terms of the variables mentioned above, as well as other factors pertinent to the
management and planning of infrastructure in the U.S. Some major research questions which
begin to address a more coordinated and integrated approach to civil infrastructure renewal and
development include the following:
•
How do infrastructure institutions interact with each other and with applicable political
institutions? How can these relationships be improved?
•
How do infrastructure organizations interact with other, “non-infrastructure” institutions,
such as the finance and insurance industries?
•
How will the current environment of political deregulation impact the goal of improved
integration and coordination of infrastructure institutions?
•
What kinds of mechanisms/organizations can be used to mediate and encourage
collaboration between infrastructure institutions?
Infrastructure Agencies and Institutions: Regional Services vs. Home Rule
For a number of reasons, infrastructure systems historically have developed their own
administrative/managerial systems, which quite frequently are not only different but also
separate from the regular, elected bodies of state and local governments.
Agencies responsible for infrastructure service delivery include regional boards, public utility
companies, state departments of transportation, municipal line departments, special purpose
districts, and even private companies under contract. They range from very large to very small,
and in many cases the institutional mechanisms have been improvised or developed ad hoc to be
able to deal with actual problems.
Is this a problem? Should the arrangements be streamlined or fixed? Perhaps not: if it ain’t
broke, don’t fix it.
However, if the situation is not broken, it is certainly not elegant and is probably much less than
efficient. This becomes particularly bothersome if one looks at the regular government structure,
within which, presumably, all public actions should fit.
The specific issue is home rule, carefully protected by local communities, which maintains that
land-use decisions are the exclusive prerogative of local government. Since infrastructure
ultimately does nothing except serve land uses, a high level of two-way cooperation and
coordination has to be expected. This does not always happen - why should it, when the power
base is so sharply separated?
Research Needs:
37
•
How can the home-rule situation be made compatible with the need to integrate
infrastructure across jurisdictions and disciplines?
•
What are the appropriate managerial organizations for various infrastructure systems and
for adopting a multi-system approach to infrastructure management?
•
Is there any reasonable chance to reform or modify basic institutional structures
(amendment of the U.S. Constitution) to be more integrative functionally and geographically,
for example?
The Role of Total Quality Management (TQM) in Public Infrastructure Institutions
Unlike private businesses, institutions (especially public institutions) charged with the
responsibility for construction, maintenance, and operation of infrastructure face constraints
which inhibit the effective performance of infrastructure.
Public institutions have attempted to institute TQM principles into the management of
infrastructure. Working together, public- and private-sector managers have identified three
critical areas that inhibit full implementation of TQM in the public sector: (1) human resource
systems, (2) contracting and procurement regulations, and (3) financial constraints and controls.
These factors inhibit agencies from functioning in a performance-based environment. Different
governmental agencies have different controls in these areas and several states have
implemented performance-based budgeting (e.g., Texas and Oregon).
Research Needs:
•
What are the best practices in these three areas that allow public agencies to operate in the
TQM environment and still protect the public interest?
•
Has performance-based budgeting improved the quality of infrastructure?
•
How did the political environment come to authorizing changes that allowed the
implementation of TQM (who gave up control?) and how has the political process adapted to
the changes?
•
What steps are necessary to implement TQM and performance-based budgeting in the public
sector?
Institutional Models: A Case-Study Approach to Fragmented (Isolated) Infrastructure
Decision-making
While there are more examples of fragmented development of infrastructure in the United States,
there are many good examples of political organizations and institutions that have been
established for the purpose of integrated infrastructure planning and development. The issue is
38
how valuable a case-study approach is to research in the area of infrastructure development and
renewal.
An integrated approach to decision-making is critical to the future of the nation’s infrastructure.
The high cost of renewing aging infrastructure in the older eastern cities and suburbs demands a
better approach to joint and integrated development. Certainly the type of fragmented
infrastructure planning and development that is used in most of the country cannot continue.
While the traditional technical research is also still important, the economic advantages of
integrated planning, joint use of facilities and right of way, and joint development are obvious.
Research in this area to develop institutional models in a better way is a critical need of the
country.
Institutional models of integrated approaches to infrastructure renewal are numerous and highly
variable. The examples range from a county in Pennsylvania where there are almost 400
separate boards, commissions, and other governing bodies that are all involved in some type of
infrastructure management, to the “Baltimore Committee,” which directed the complete
rebuilding of the City’s infrastructure.
In California, the legislature established 41 local Councils of Government (COGs) in the 1970s
for the purpose of creating some semblance of integrated planning and controlled infrastructure
development. These COGs cross all political boundaries, and they deal with all types of
development (primarily, but not exclusively, transportation). These institutions are organized
around regions that have common interests and problems. Represented by officials from the
various cities, counties, and public works agencies, they have jurisdiction over most
development and transportation improvements. Most of these COGs have appropriate staff to
conduct research and provide recommendations to the governing boards. While this may not be
a perfect solution, it is a beginning for integrated infrastructure development and renewal. Such
solutions as transportation corridors, where both rail, highway, and communications facilities are
included in common rights-of-way, have evolved as a result of this type of planning.
Research Needs:
•
Given the many examples of integrated infrastructure development and renewal throughout
the country, can a comprehensive case-study research project that investigates and evaluates
the various models in use today be a valuable contribution to an integrated research
agenda?
Institutional Models: A Management Approach to Fragmented (Isolated) Infrastructure
Decision-making
Infrastructure decision-making is typically fragmented. Individuals who are responsible for one
infrastructure sector are often not aware of decisions being made by individuals in other sectors.
Frequently, separate, possibly redundant, databases of infrastructure inventories are maintained,
further hindering the opportunity for effective communication and synergistic decision-making.
The result is often an inability to find optimal management solutions.
39
There is a need to develop comprehensive infrastructure decision support systems that facilitate both vertically and horizontally within agencies - communication among and between different
decision-making entities. Strategies for the most effective use of limited resources must be
identified and championed within responsible institutions.
Research Needs:
•
How can existing fragmented infrastructure entities be most effectively integrated?
•
How can multiple infrastructure jurisdictions better identify management solutions that
reflect synergistic benefits rather than those resulting from compromise?
Institutional Models: Collaborative Decision-making
Collaborative decision-making mechanisms and institutional interaction mechanisms based on
past successes and failures need to be the focus of NSF’s integrated infrastructure research
agenda. Collaborative decision-making mechanisms for infrastructure issues are partly but not
fully understood at present. Many case studies have already been documented (in reports by the
National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, and others) of infrastructure projects
that either have been judged as relative successes or relative failures, along with some
discussion as to the underlying reasons for the outcomes that occurred. However, these reasons
have not been sufficiently catalogued and examined in an intellectually rigorous fashion in terms
of casual relationships and dynamic responses. Linked to this issue is a clear accounting of
benefits and costs for each involved stakeholder group. Finally, there is a need to establish
clearly the value of all of the various partnerships available through these case studies. The
range of both partner categories and partnering mechanisms (formal and informal) is very large.
The partnering dynamics involved in any large-scale project usually are a prime driver toward
success or failure. Few of these dynamics are currently clearly understood.
Research Needs:
•
What are the most important causal relationships among various institutions that would
determine infrastructure project success or failure?
•
What are the most important partnering dynamics within a major infrastructure project, and
to what extent can we quantitatively define the importance of these dynamics for project
success?
•
How precise can we be in using “case study” style reasoning from prior infrastructure
projects to determine future outcomes? What are the most important limits to the case study
approach?
40
3.6 EDUCATION
New types of educational initiatives may have to be undertaken to enhance basic, long-term
research on infrastructure issues; these vary in financing need, scope, and degree of innovation.
Financial Need for Educational Initiatives
Research funding to address the educational needs for an integrated infrastructure perspective
should be long-term, and consist of two-to-five-year grants, for example. The grants should be
sizable; at least, $150,000/year per research project.
Creating basic educational programs demands more funding from different sources. Two
possible sources of additional funding are interested foundations and the private sector.
In order to encourage researchers to submit applications for the funding of educational programs,
the application process has to be simplified. New ways should be found to submit grant
proposals so that researchers spend less time and money to write a full proposal. (In Europe,
some funds are given to key research establishments with known track records.)
Scope of Integrated Infrastructure Education
Ways are needed to include more young people in learning about infrastructure. Creative means
are needed for working with K-12 students, undergraduate and graduate students, and local
community groups. Researchers might be drawn from the following:
•
business analysts to study markets and international finance and financing of projects;
•
economists to examine alternative sources of infrastructure funding from local, state, and
federal government (public finance);
•
engineers to develop and test alternative technologies;
•
planners to study the relationship between industrial development, regional restructuring, and
infrastructure provision;
•
political scientists to study the relevant role of state and alternative governance mechanisms;
•
sociologists to look at who is being served by infrastructure; and
•
telecommunication specialists to determine potential trade-offs between infrastructure and
telecommunications.
41
Types of New Educational Initiatives
Student interns should be funded to work on a major project in several key sites around the
country (Note: local communities might be willing to help fund the interns). These interns could
include high school and university students. The effort should involve a long-term approach to
the sites.
Three or more research centers should be established with a focus on infrastructure of the future.
Individual researchers should also be funded (given above caveats about financing these
projects): some should focus on the different types of issues raised above and some should
mainly deal with issues of the future.
Universities should collaborate to sponsor workshops on specific issues, conducting specific
types of research, etc.
FURTHER READING
American Planning Association, Integrated Transportation and Land Use. Chicago, IL: APA,
1994.
Bamburger, R.J., et al., Infrastructure Support for Economic Development. Planning Advisory
Service, Report Number 390. Washington, DC: American Planning Association, 1985.
Barnett, J., The Fractured Metropolis. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1995.
Brevard, J.H., Capital Facilities Planning: A Tactical Approach. Washington, DC: Planners
Press, 1985.
Congress of the United States, Budget Office, New Directions for the Nation’s Public Works.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988.
Dewberry & Davis, Land Development Handbook. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1996.
Grant, A.A. and A.C. Lemer, eds., In Our Own Backyard: Principles for Effective Improvement
of the Nation’s Infrastructure. Report of the Building Research Board of the National Research
Council. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1993.
Guyer, J.P., ed., Infrastructure for Urban Growth. Proceedings of the Specialty Conference of the
American Society of Civil Engineers. New York, NY: ASCE, 1985.
Hass, P., R. Keohane and M. Levy, Institutions for Earth: Sources of Effective Environmental
Protection. London and Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993.
Kunstler, J., The Geography of Nowhere. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
42
Stough, R.R., “Infrastructure and Interurban and Suburban Networks,” Workshop presentation.
Washington, DC: George Mason University, Center for Regional Analysis, The Institute of
Public Policy, June 15, 1996.
The New York Building Congress, Building New York City for the 21st Century. New York,
NY: The NY Building Congress, 1991.
43
CHAPTER 4
INFRASTRUCTURE SUSTAINABILITY
4.0 INTRODUCTION
This chapter outlines the most promising interdisciplinary research topics related to sustaining
the economic, political, and physical viability of infrastructure systems over and beyond their
design lifetimes. This theme is addressed in terms of four topics: Life-Cycle Engineering,
Technology Investment, Performance Measures, and Project Management. The four topics
overlap and cut across some of the findings and recommendations from the two preceding
chapters on urban concentrations and interurban and suburban networks, but the particular focus
of this undertaking is how these relate to sustaining infrastructure systems regardless of their
geographic location.
The following problem statement and questions provide a framework for the infrastructure
sustainability theme and the four main topics identified above.
Problem Statement:
Infrastructure sustainability refers to the ability to maintain infrastructure systems at
some desired level of performance or to change their performance at some desired rate
and direction. Moreover, the human and natural resources required to sustain these
systems should be considered, and system capacities should not be exceeded. Current
policies, statutes and incentives work against mechanisms and incentives for
sustainability.
Questions:
What policies, incentives, finance mechanisms, and industry structures are needed to
facilitate life-cycle management and the introduction of new technologies?
How do we sustain the life-cycle performance of infrastructure efficiently and cost
effectively while meeting social, economic, and environmental expectations?
How can the four topics in this section - Life-Cycle Engineering, Technology
Investment, Performance Measures, and Project Management - best reinforce one
another to improve overall lifetime delivered value?
Though the four topics are treated separately, they are interrelated. Life-cycle engineering
(LCE) is the more encompassing topic from the standpoint of sustainability, and each of the
other three concepts - technology investment, performance measures, and project management are all critical aspects of LCE. For example:
44
•
Technology Investment. There is a critical need to find innovative approaches for
technology investment at every point in the life-cycle of infrastructure systems. In other
words, research and the funding to support it are needed to develop more durable materials,
better monitoring and diagnostic techniques, better designs, and more rational methods for
determining design safety factors throughout the lifetime of infrastructure. Without these
new technologies, sustainability is harder and more costly to achieve. Moreover, the funding
sources for these technology investments over the course of an infrastructure system’s
lifetime are often not well-integrated.
•
Performance Measures. Life-cycle engineering requires performance measures that are
supported by monitoring of the physical state of the system over time and changing public
expectations for system use, capacity and performance.
•
Project Management. The growing sophistication of infrastructure systems, especially if
viewed in a life-cycle perspective, places new demands on the professional standards and
methodologies of project management. Some of these demands pertain to how best to
identify, prioritize, and satisfy a broad set of requirements (including technical and useroriented requirements) early during initial design and construction phases of the life of a
system. Others pertain to coordinating and rationalizing stakeholder interests and factoring
these into project management methods throughout the infrastructure's lifetime.
Each of these topics as well as their interrelationships provides a rich ground for
interdisciplinary research.
4.1 LIFE-CYCLE ENGINEERING (LCE)
LCE refers to an engineering process that incorporates into design the “true costs” of
construction, operation, maintenance, renewal, and any other requirements over the expected
lifetime of the facility. LCE encompasses not only initial design and construction but also the
five Rs over an infrastructure's lifetime: repair, rehabilitation, reconstruction, retirement, and
removal.
Issues identified for needed research and development (R&D) in support of LCE are given below
under the headings Design Methodology, Cost Estimation, Preventive Strategies, Forecasting
Change, and Knowledge Base.
Design Methodology
The future benefit and cost of the construction or reconstruction of infrastructure is largely
determined by the initial choices made in the design phase. These choices often fail to
incorporate numerous factors, and in particular, those pertaining to LCE.
Experience shows that traditional linear models of design fail to account for important
considerations concerning future use and impact of infrastructure systems. Life-cycle objectives,
political considerations, the impact of system ownership, and the interrelationships among these
45
factors must be understood at the earliest stages of design development in order to improve
infrastructure projects and provide support for infrastructure managers. How should one take
these factors into account in developing design strategies, and how best should these factors be
considered and reconciled in design reviews?
System safety can be an important aspect of the lifetime of a facility, and is often determined at
the design stage. Knowledge obtained through the use of computer-aided software tools and
advanced testing methods is often being used to reduce design safety factors beyond what has
been historical practice. However, when safety factors are reduced in this way, low-probability
failures are often overlooked which can lead to catastrophic events. Such failures erode public
confidence in engineering practices and the use of new technologies. Are there more rational
methods for determining safety factors that take into account structural design, testing, and the
probabilities and risks of failure?
An initial stumbling block in LCE is determining the appropriate lifespan of an infrastructure
system. This decision is made either implicitly or explicitly during design. While a definite
lifetime can be assigned to some systems based on economic decision-making, the lifespan of
some systems is indefinite, either because of the prohibitive costs of abandonment or
replacement, or in some cases the high cost of capital. Moreover, for many infrastructure
systems, strategies that maximize the lifetime of a facility do not account for the fact that a long
lifetime may not always be desirable. For example, there is often a trade-off between
permanence and flexibility. The more permanent the facility is, the more inflexible it is when
functions and uses change, and the inflexibility of long-lasting structures becomes a serious
impediment to change. How should the appropriate lifespan of an infrastructure system be
decided? How can flexibility and renewal be incorporated into the life-cycle concept?
“Concurrent engineering” is a growing practice in manufacturing industries that integrates
manufacturing, reliability, and recycling considerations into the initial product design. This
practice has overcome some of the “over-the-transom” bottlenecks that have extended lead time
and total production costs or have added to the consumer cost of ownership or society's cost of
disposal. What new design methodologies will accommodate the design of infrastructure
systems for maintainability, renewal, and recycling? How can these tools best be tailored for
collaborative use when design, construction, operation, and maintenance roles are separate
functions?
Cost Estimation
While LCE is a relatively new practice in infrastructure investment and management, it still
lacks a systematic approach to the estimation of “true costs” over the entire lifetime of an
infrastructure facility or system. The following strong deterrents currently impede cost
estimation within an LCE framework: (a) incentives and statutory restrictions often favor “leastfirst-cost” contracting; (b) new capital projects are often favored politically over maintenance or
rebuild projects; and (c) stretched budgets generally preclude field inspections, favor corrective
over preventive maintenance, and foster the use of minimal specifications for materials and
structures.
46
Initial capital costs are usually given a priority over other investment considerations. Even
though operation and maintenance costs may be evaluated and projected, accountability for the
estimates that result is often weak because of inadequate political support for infrastructure
maintenance and renewal. To what extent are user costs and benefits, which fully reflect
operation and maintenance costs, factored into the life-cycle of an infrastructure system? How
should one weigh costs and benefits, both from political and user perspectives? What are the
key variables?
A related issue is the need for engineers to acquire a good understanding of financial
management and to have a stronger grasp of economic decision-making to include the time value
of money, comparative analysis of costs, depreciation methods, and benefit-cost analysis. How
do we train engineers in the basic concepts and methods of financial management, not only to
estimate and control costs but also to communicate costs more effectively to the public?
Prevention Strategies
LCE can be viewed as a tool for advancing preventive strategies (versus corrective and reactive
strategies). The rationale for preventive strategies is very strong; however, to be effective these
strategies must be supported by performance measures, monitoring and diagnostic tools, improved
work-scheduling methods, and information technology tools. Since decisionmakers respond more
readily to demonstration than advocacy, there is also a need for compelling evidence that preventive
approaches are more cost-effective and yield better results than corrective approaches. What case
studies exist or could be undertaken that could provide evidence for the benefits of preventive
strategies that overcome institutional and political barriers to confronting these needs?
The interrelationships between the quality of an infrastructure system and its lifetime also bear on
selecting appropriate operation and maintenance strategies. Quality often includes both tangible and
intangible factors depending on social usage patterns and expectations. How much is known about
these factors and how can a model to integrate them be developed?
Forecasting and Managing Change
While physical infrastructure systems may not change perceptibly over short time periods, the
services they provide may change substantially when usage patterns are altered due to the
introduction of new technologies and changing consumer preferences. How can these potential
changes be better accommodated by “designed-in” flexibilities or modularities? What means can
be developed to alter use during infrastructure lifetimes within a fixed structural framework?
In order to best employ LCE methods to manage change, it is first necessary to anticipate and
understand how the social, economic, political, and cultural spheres impact infrastructure. While
such considerations add complexity to planning and decision-making, over time the results of this
approach would greatly enhance the value of LCE approaches. What are some useful tools for both
predicting such changes and analyzing trends? What models from statistics and mathematics can
be applied to changes in the context of infrastructure?
47
Knowledge Base
Because LCE has a relatively short history, the knowledge base concerning its uses and experiences
is relatively thin and largely unknown. Industrial case studies are needed to improve the teaching of
LCE methods in the universities. Research is needed to interrelate experience to practice, to
determine which practices are best, and to analyze possible impacts of new technologies - especially
information technologies. What is the appropriate curriculum for educating engineers in life-cycle
methods and how can this curriculum be adapted for the continuing education of practicing
engineers? Can industry offer role models to assist in this education process? What is the role of
LCE in providing a creative framework for research and development and the generation of
incentives for integrating innovative renewal technologies and monitoring systems at the design and
construction stages?
Synopsis: Limitations and Advantages of Using LCE
The following important limitations to the concept of LCE exist within each of the five areas
above, and should be kept in mind in shaping a research agenda: (a) integrated design practices
and software tools needed to support design for reliability and sustainability are lacking; (b) lifecycle cost estimates are often too uncertain to be useful; (c) management and contracting
practices do not generally encourage partnerships, alliances, or innovative “design-buildoperate” approaches that are a critical basis for preventive strategies; (d) forecasting future
changes in infrastructure use and capacity is fraught with complexity and uncertainty, since
social, economic, and political factors impose potentially conflicting requirements. An
overriding consideration is the need for better communications with the general public and with
policy and decision-makers concerning infrastructure performance, use, degradation,
obsolescence, and costs; and (e) effective LCE practices critically depend on the quality and
breadth of our knowledge base concerning the “state of the practice,” performance measures, and
the applicability of emerging technologies and associated risks.
While the barriers and current limitations of LCE for infrastructure design, construction, and
management become increasingly evident, the potential impact and advantages of this approach on
current engineering and management practices have not yet been sufficiently explored. While the
topics above address the issue of how to improve the functioning of infrastructure design and
operations, there is a great need for research to understand why LCE is so important. The need for
and the limitations of LCE need to be evaluated along with their practical consequences for current
practice and procurement processes. What is the current state of LCE practice? What incentives do
the various infrastructure stakeholders have for LCE deployment and how can LCE provide a
productive framework for evaluating, promoting, and developing public-private partnerships for
infrastructure investments? Once agreed to, what institutional policies and contractual frameworks
can be developed to provide incentives for and enforce accountability in infrastructure life-cycle
management? How can LCE be used to evaluate our current infrastructure engineering and
management practices, specifically with regard to the design of alternative systems for
maintainability vs. replacement in the urban environment?
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4.2 TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENT
In most sectors of our economy, new technologies are bringing about reductions in lead time, greater
productivity, and improvements in quality and reliability. Since the construction industry is one of
the largest industries in the U.S., even small gains would bring about enormous economic benefits.
However, there is a dearth of financial support for promising infrastructure technologies. Public
sector funds are shrinking and private sector investments in R&D generally constitute less than one
percent of revenues. Industry fragmentation, which disperses risks, and a lack of incentives are
working against the adoption of new technologies.
While advances in materials science and engineering promise greater performance and innovation in
the construction industry, dynamic predictive models for degradation rates under simulated-use
environments are lacking and there are no accepted measurement techniques. There is a general
need for modern facilities to test models and prototypes of new structures using new materials and
instrumentation technologies under simulated-use environments.
Issues identified for needed R&D are organized below under the headings Incentives, Organization
and Process, Dissemination, and Education.
Incentives
There is a general lack of understanding of how system ownership, contextual factors, investment
timing, and sectorial emphases motivate and create incentives for R&D investments. How, for
example, does timing and the speed with which the incentive system operates affect how new
technologies are introduced in infrastructure systems in the U.S.? In what ways do life-cycle costing
methods introduce barriers to new technology?
Risk-sharing is considered vital to increasing R&D investments. Greater industry integration by
means of mergers and acquisitions, partnerships and alliances, and supportive contracting practices
is a useful way to aggregate risks, increase incentives for R&D investment, and stimulate the
establishment of risk-sharing pools for that purpose. However, understanding the impacts of system
ownership (e.g., privatization or public-private partnership) and management strategies (e.g.,
preventive versus corrective maintenance) on R&D investments and monitoring the relationships
among key participants in the innovation process are essential. How can these relationships be
modeled? What types of cooperative risk-sharing instruments and set-aside funds for increasing
R&D investment would be advantageous and acceptable? What are the incentives for and barriers
to introducing innovative technologies into engineering, performance monitoring, and construction
practice? What are the roles and potential benefits of university collaboration with industry and
government in research, technological developments, feasibility assessment and demonstration, and
technology transfer? What are the implications of such collaboration for putting technology into
practice?
Better assessment tools that take into account human productivity and well-being, energy savings,
and environmental benefits are needed to determine the returns on R&D investments. These, by
necessity, would involve measurements of both tangible and intangible returns and the equating of
these returns against a broader set of goals than has historically been practiced. How should these
49
goals and assessment tools be developed? What impacts might they have in the development of
performance- versus consensus-based standards in the industry? What has been the return on
research, development, and demonstration investments and what is the effect of investments in
technology on infrastructure engineering, management, construction, and maintenance practices?
Organization and Process
New investments are required not only for physical R&D facilities devoted to infrastructure
technologies but also their related “software” and “org(anization)ware.” New partnerships among
federal, state, industry and university researchers could leverage both financial and intellectual
capital within the R&D enterprise. There is a need for “test beds” to both demonstrate and lower the
risks of adapting and integrating new technologies in infrastructure systems. To what extent can
government facilities or engineering research centers at universities provide the role of prequalifying and pre-approving new technologies to minimize their risk and facilitate their adoption?
What impacts could new information technologies have on infrastructure? What new peer review
institutions are needed to evaluate promising designs and construction concepts, in addition to their
benefits and risks? What consortia among technology providers and users are needed to set the
strategic directions for research?
Organizational procedures and practices, particularly in governmental institutions, frequently inhibit
innovation and the introduction of innovative practices. The barriers to innovation include the
attitudes and functional narrowness of many managers and, professionals and organizational cultures
that are resistant to change. Can better forms of contracting induce industry to invest in
technological and process innovation? Can better procurement processes that incorporate
stakeholders’ perspectives from throughout the system (e.g. construction and user representatives)
increase innovation? Are there case studies that would offer models for improving organizational
receptivity to innovation?
Dissemination
Since many technological innovations in structural design and construction occur at local, state, and
regional levels, the dissemination of new design concepts, databases, and construction practices is
challenging. It is here, especially, that the use of new information technologies that facilitate
concurrent engineering, data management, and telecommunications could pay high dividends. What
information infrastructure is needed to disseminate best practices and share information? What
knowledge-based system is needed to document experiences and benefits in the implementation of
new technologies? Since the public is wary about technological promises, how should such
information be presented?
There is a need for researchers to identify potential users of their research results early in the R&D
process. This would not only help in building partnerships for R&D support but also for the ultimate
transfer of R&D results to practice. What is the current extent of interaction among potential users
and providers of R&D results? How best can these linkages be broadened and strengthened?
50
Education
Programs and centers for interdisciplinary research on infrastructure are underrepresented at the
nation’s top research universities. NSF’s commitment to greater investments in this area is a welcome
departure from the past. There is a need now to anticipate how the results from this research will
find their way into new course and curriculum developments in schools of engineering, architecture,
and management, among others. In particular, how will the results from both disciplinary and
interdisciplinary research be integrated to benefit educational programs in infrastructure systems
design, construction, and operations? What new programs for entry-level and continuing education
will spring from these R&D investments? How will important elements from the social, behavioral,
and economic sciences be integrated into these educational programs? What roles and
responsibilities will principal investigators and center directors have as they carry out these
purposes?
4.3 PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Performance measures are needed to support LCE, evaluation of technological investments, and
project management. Such measures provide a mechanism to evaluate whether or not infrastructure
sustainability goals and objectives are being met.
Agencies only recently have begun to track the performance of various infrastructure systems.
However, performance-related information is often difficult and costly to obtain, especially over
time, and when it is available it is often ignored in decision-making processes.
The consequences of a poorly designed or implemented program of performance measures are
many: (a) interrelationships among components and systems are not well understood, (b) the
attributes of a system or facility that may affect future performance are not well defined, (c) needs
and opportunities for new technologies to improve system performance are not fully appreciated,
and (d) potential cost savings and productivity enhancements are not being achieved.
Issues identified for needed R&D are given below under the headings: Performance Definition,
Institutional Use, and Technological Impacts.
Performance Definition
The concept of performance as it is applied to both customer needs and the decision-making process
requires better understanding. The definition of performance combines public interests and concerns
with infrastructure output and technical elements of the system. It also links customer use of
infrastructure with customer willingness-to-pay for it as well as infrastructure targets that can be
practically achieved within cost and time limits. It is also important to define “performance” at
various levels to include component, sub-system, and system levels. If performance measures are
inadequate, they can misrepresent the system and the evaluation of that system against goals and
objectives. What are the best measures of performance in terms of desired outputs? How do you
optimize performance where there are non-aligned “stakeholders” with different objectives? What
techniques are available to help bridge stakeholder differences when this becomes a key obstacle to
51
using performance-based approaches? What are the interrelationships between performance from
an engineering and structural standpoint and from the user standpoint?
Institutional Use
It is important to understand institutional impediments to performance-based management in the
development and operation of infrastructure systems. These mainly consist of organizational
structures, processes, and cultures that are inflexible to change. Inflexibilities also exist in
contracting, financial controls, and means for service delivery. In most instances, performancebased improvement initiatives must be carried down to the project level, where much infrastructure
work is performed and delivered. What institutional changes are needed to make performance
management an effective basis for infrastructure development and operations? What are the chief
obstacles to successful implementation of performance-based management and budgeting? What
does experience offer by way of guidance in developing successful models for using performance
measurement?
Ideally, decision-making processes concerning infrastructure systems should be extended to consider
such factors as user’s time, pollution, and various externalities that affect public interests. For
example, the ability to measure public time savings as a function of performance could provide a
basis for pricing services to optimize resource availability. Effective infrastructure management
must also integrate concerns about reliability, ease of repair, and safety in order to fulfill
commitments to maintenance and repair. Unfortunately, such factors are often difficult to measure
or predict. Which time-dependent models are feasible for predicting the factors that are critical to
performance? To what extent could non-destructive condition monitoring and accelerated testing
techniques support these predictive models?
Technological Impacts
It is important to understand the benefits of technology for interpreting public concerns and
expectations and enhancing the collection, evaluation, and translation of relevant performance data.
Emerging information technologies should facilitate improved methods for satisfying demand,
differentiating services, and charging for these services on a more rational basis. How can such
technologies contribute added value to infrastructure services through the collection of more
meaningful data? What synergies are possible with high-bandwidth systems involving internet and
interactive video?
Technological advances in “smart” materials that have internal sensors, actuators and
microprocessors could pave the way to self-monitoring and self-diagnosing structures for future
infrastructure systems. What early “demonstration test beds” would enable an evaluation of these
technologies for infrastructure applications?
4.4 PROJECT MANAGEMENT
In order for the concept of integration of different disciplines to work for infrastructure, it has to
work at every level. Once projects are planned and selected, project management becomes the tool
52
by which infrastructure facilities and services are implemented. Thus, a critical research issue is the
extent to which integration occurs within the project management function.
Project management pertains to single projects that provide public services. Conflicting,
uncoordinated functions are common to even a single project. Municipal agencies often routinely
scope and design projects at the least short-term cost to themselves. Project phases are rarely wellintegrated, and providers of services often limit their concerns to their own systems and optimize
them at the expense of the projects of other organizations. These practices can lead to protracted
delivery time, added costs to tax payers and rate payers, suboptimized systems, increased numbers of
interferences, and added construction and maintenance costs by other operators.
There is a need for systems that are more comprehensively conceptualized and modeled. The task of
such systems would be to improve coordination, align the objectives of key internal and external
players, share data, resolve stakeholder concerns, and reduce uncertainties and ambiguities.
Complex projects are difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances. Project designs that
incorporate life-cycle engineering, new technologies, and more comprehensive performance
measures will have to incorporate techniques of planning and implementation that solve critical
problems of coordination, incentives, data definition, information flows, control and feedback.
Opportunities abound for learning about effective project management practices. For example, the
Department of Defense, the military departments, and their defense contractors have refined project
and system management practices over many years. Studying and adapting to better methods
developed elsewhere could bring dramatic improvements and be a rich source of ideas. Issues
identified for needed R&D are given below under the headings: Contracting, New Tools, and
Education.
Contracting
Changing performance demands on government agencies have produced momentum for improving
project management by means of contracting practices. Innovative methods are needed to provide
incentives for improving project management practices, reducing product delivery schedules, and
increasing collaborative efforts among contractors and their subcontractors and between municipal
agencies and utilities. What case studies might be developed that would elucidate the benefits of
improved project management and innovative contracting practices? What contracting practices
are available that can achieve the desired performance outcomes while maintaining necessary
requirements for accountability and control?
New Tools
The information age has brought into the marketplace many new computer-aided tools for
project management. For example, computer programs are available for three-dimensional
scheduling, real-time project monitoring, and interactive work planning and scheduling. Virtual
reality offers a powerful means for project managers to visualize a complex project at different
stages of construction and conceptualize potential bottlenecks and interferences. How might
advanced, commercially available computer tools benefit project managers engaged in
53
infrastructure design and construction?
advantageous to this community?
What other advanced tools would be especially
Education
The technical, management, and communication demands placed on project managers today
extend far beyond their professional education. Many are unprepared to perform at a high level
in a multi-disciplinary and multi-functional organization or to communicate effectively with the
press or public at-large. Yet these are growing demands in the profession. Successful
performance in this rapidly changing environment requires new skills and new ways of thinking.
What university curricula can be developed that will provide an in-depth education in required
technical and management skills? Do educational programs currently exist that would be ideal
for practicing project managers? How can training in public communication skills be best
integrated into such programs?
4.5 CONCLUSIONS
The concept of infrastructure sustainability appeared only recently in engineering. This concept
conveys the importance of new thinking and new approaches for an era where land-use pressures
in a heavily built environment fundamentally alter the premises for designing, maintaining, and
renewing infrastructure systems. Infrastructure sustainability comprises all of the ways for
taking into account future value, use, and impact of infrastructure systems. Research needed to
advance this idea has been examined under four headings: LCE, technology investment,
performance measures, and project management.
LCE expands the scope and vision of current models used in designing, costing, and managing
infrastructure systems in a manner that is more integrated. Systematic research needs to explore
how the structural relationships, assumptions, incentives, and practices sustain the current
system, and what changes are needed to put LCE into practice.
New technology and the investment practices that bring it into being represent two of the most
promising means for achieving the vision of sustainable infrastructure. Progress toward this end
is held back, in part, as a result of insufficient knowledge of the relationship between investment
decisions and the structure of current incentives. Research is needed to fill this gap, especially in
the area of risk-sharing, R&D process, and dissemination.
Research into performance measures and project management are key to infrastructure
sustainability. Performance measures are essential to sustainable infrastructure for two reasons.
First, in integrated systems, real-time feedback (both technical and operational) is crucial to
performance management. Second, effective evaluation is required to maintain support for
infrastructure systems. Currently, superficial measures of performance used for most
infrastructure systems are inadequate. Better project management is equally important, since the
development and renewal of infrastructure is project-based. New knowledge developed in LCE,
technology, and performance must be reflected at the project level in order for the new vision to
54
be achieved. This will require new forms of planning and coordination and represents an
important area of research in the era of sustainable infrastructure.
Abstracting from the four organizing themes of this chapter, four important issues relating to
infrastructure sustainability emerge that deserve the attention of the research community,
especially university research communities. These are: (1) the high potential leverage that the
use of advanced information technologies creates, (2) the need for new curricula to better
prepare engineers and project managers for a rapidly changing and ever-demanding
environment, (3) the high potential benefits of sharing best practices and knowledge-based
information systems, and (4) the need for changes in organizational structures and practices to
achieve technological and performance innovations. While these are not research topics, per se,
they have important implications for the “current state of practice,” and need to be addressed in
order to carry out joint research and educational programs of research effectively.
FURTHER READING
Burbridge, R.N.G., ed., Perspectives on Project Management. London, UK: Peregrinus Ltd.,
1988.
Costanza, R., Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability. New York,
NY: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Dietz, D., “Engineering Sustainable Development,” Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 118 (May
1996), pp. 48-55.
Frame, J.D., The New Project Management. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994.
Johnson, M.D., “Life Cycle Management: It’s Already Broken,” Journal of Systems
Management (February 1991), pp. 32-37.
Marrazzo, E.J., “The Challenge of Sustainable Infrastructure Development,” Environmental
Progress, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Fall 1996).
55
CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
5.0 INTRODUCTION
Infrastructure performs many roles in society, and supports the entire fabric of human
settlements and activities. The multiplicity of roles, the diversity of clientele, the large size and
expanse of facilities, the levels of investment that typically sustain them, and the ubiquitousness
and complexity of infrastructure systems inevitably involve a wide range of disciplines, activities
and interest groups. Although progress has been made in a few isolated areas toward the
integration of engineering and non-engineering aspects of infrastructure, more is needed in order
to maintain a viable infrastructure under changing conditions. Many infrastructure services and
facilities that share some operational interdependency are not effectively coordinated or
integrated; discontinuities often occur in services and facilities, despite the fact that customer use
is continuous. Similarly, the management and academic disciplines that deal with infrastructure
technology, services, and impacts are often fragmented.
These observations are not new, and are documented in a very extensive literature on
infrastructure. Moreover, laws and practices have gone a long way in acknowledging and
accommodating the need for interaction. However, since infrastructure demands often continue
to outstrip its supply or capacity, we have to regularly revisit the issue. Problems persist and
become continually transformed. The parameters of supply and demand continually change, and
infrastructure systems are not typically designed or managed to accommodate these changes.
The challenge now is to identify what elements need to be integrated, where integration should
occur, what the barriers are, and how research can overcome these barriers.
5.1 INTEGRATED INFRASTRUCTURE RESEARCH: Barriers and Opportunities
A number of social, economic, environmental, and technological conditions that underscore the
need to address an integrated approach to infrastructure were identified in previous chapters.
Some of the more significant observations that emerged from the Workshop are highlighted
below.
Population and Human Settlement Patterns and Trends
The concentration of people and activities in urban areas has generated dense infrastructure
systems in very close proximity to one another and to the clients they serve, even in urban areas
with declining populations. This proximity often creates disruptive interactions among
infrastructure facilities, their environments, and their client base that are often greater than a
disruption in any single system would be. This occurs not only when one system breaks down
and affects other services but also when construction and repair cycles for different systems are
56
out of sync with one another. In comparison, less urbanized areas are often characterized by
highly variable settlement patterns and densities, and differential rates of population growth and
development. The synchronization of infrastructure with these patterns and trends creates
unique needs for coordination and integration between the engineering aspects of infrastructure
development and the socioeconomic context of regional development.
Economic and Financial Conditions
The level and timing of infrastructure investments are often out of alignment with infrastructure
maintenance, renewal, and reuse needs, which are determined by government priority-setting,
engineering audits, and public preferences. One reason this occurs is that different, often
autonomous institutions are responsible for investment decisions depending on the type and
location of infrastructure, and whether it is in the design or construction stage or undergoing
maintenance or renewal. Institutions need the capability to identify, assemble, and manage
resources over the lifetime of infrastructure facilities and services, yet this capacity is largely
absent due to the stratification of management.
Institutions
Institutions rarely systematically address how infrastructure systems built in the past can meet
the needs of a changing population: that is, how to keep infrastructure services current and
flexible in spite of the physically and spatially fixed nature of most systems. Institutions also
have to balance the interests of competing stakeholders at any given time, and foster a common
language among them in order to resolve differences. Integration among institutions is thus of
utmost importance. Regardless of the type of geographic area (urban or suburban) or functional
concern, similar barriers to integrated research emerge, and the burden of coping falls largely
upon planning and management institutions. The results are continuing performance problems,
inefficiency, and ad hoc arrangements due to institutions attempting to patch together working
relationships.
5.2
DIRECTIONS FOR AN INTEGRATED INFRASTRUCTURE RESEARCH
AGENDA
It is clear from the arguments presented above that discontinuities exist among the engineering
aspects of infrastructure, the institutions that support it, and the social, economic, and
environmental contexts of infrastructure facilities and services. These persist in spite of the
considerable progress made in analyzing and modeling system interdependencies and in
providing the legislative, administrative, and technical support for many of them. A few key
directions for research that particularly target these interdependencies emerged from the
Workshop and are summarized below.
Goals
Although it is almost commonplace to begin a discussion of any controversial or complex issue
with a statement about goals, this is a fundamental need. The Workshop implicitly identified a
57
number of goals and continually recognized the need to address goals as a framework for
integrating infrastructure research. First, an agreement upon goals and an architecture that flows
from those goals are needed, and the architecture must be one that is flexible enough to
accommodate feedback and change. Only an overall structural concept can guide what is to be
included in an integrated system and what is to be kept separate. Goals can clarify major
differences in values and preferences that are best brought to light at the outset. The design of
system performance measures, for instance, will greatly depend upon the nature of the goals, and
will evolve from them. An example of one goal is the development of policies and financing
mechanisms to support sustainable infrastructure. Another is stewardship, that is, the
mechanism to promote accountability and responsibility for infrastructure among users or
clients. The client orientation of infrastructure services is still another frequently stated concern.
Research is needed on how to identify goals, the values upon which they are to be based, and
conflicts among them. Research also needs to develop a process to resolve differences where
they impede or confuse research, since existing public policy institutions have seldom succeeded
in clarifying goals. Many goal conflicts abound regarding the use of infrastructure. One such
conflict is the development or renewal of infrastructure for the promotion of citywide or regional
economic development versus the promotion of social or community-based needs (such as
maintaining environmental integrity, equity, and neighborhood cohesion). The infrastructure
solutions for each of these goals can differ unless a process to integrate them into a common
framework is developed. Research on the design and effectiveness of these infrastructure
systems could make an important contribution.
Client Orientation to Infrastructure Services
Infrastructure design and performance traditionally have been evaluated according to
engineering-economic criteria. Newer management concepts now emphasize the role of the
client in infrastructure performance and how the client reacts to, and in some cases, shapes
traditional criteria. This orientation needs to be pursued, diffused into infrastructure decisionmaking, and refined to take into account impacted non-user as well as user needs. Most
importantly, research is needed to help identify clients and to determine how stable or consistent
their stated infrastructure needs are, and how accountable clients are to these preferences.
Ultimately, research is needed on the processes that can be developed to reconcile disparities
among clients and between clients and infrastructure providers when they arise.
Management and Organization of Integrated Infrastructure Components
There is an immediate need to apply traditional and state-of-the-art management concepts to the
vertical and horizontal integration of the functions and responsibilities of infrastructure
institutions. Concepts from management science and organization theory can be used to develop
models for institutional redesign that achieve integration. Adaptations of systems theory and
multi-objective decision theory can play important roles here, but rules governing which
components are included and how much data is needed to sufficiently specify these complex
systems are crucial.
58
Research is needed to determine where integration is needed, under what conditions, and how it
should be applied. What is particularly noteworthy is that integration is usually applied to
discontinuities at the boundaries or points of potential intersection among different types of
infrastructure or institutions. A dramatic alteration of the basic structure of institutions to
achieve integration is of equal importance.
Alignment Problems
The issue of the timing of different components for infrastructure development and management
so that they are mutually supportive rather than in conflict continuously arises. This issue refers
to spatial, temporal, functional, resource-related, and cultural alignment. Some specific issues
are how infrastructure investment and budgeting processes can be designed to accommodate lifecycle needs. That is, research is needed on how to make budget cycles and the timing and length
of time over which investments apply coincide with when infrastructure improvements have to
be made, how long they take, and their lifespan. Another related example is the rapid assembly
of resources when and where they are needed to address critical infrastructure issues. Much can
be learned from the architecture provided by emergency management frameworks, and how they
can be adapted to more long-term needs.
Stewardship
The public interest stems from the fact that many facilities and services comprising infrastructure
are collectively shared. A collective sense of ownership or accountability for infrastructure is
needed, which does not exist now in spite of the enormous levels of investment and very
substantial aggregate worth of those investments. As a support function or a means to achieve
things other than the service it provides, infrastructure rarely has a single public constituency.
No single agency or authority in government or industry oversees all of its aspects. Everyone
regards infrastructure as important and critical, but its value in terms of quality of life and
economic multipliers has not been put in terms that society understands. Infrastructure and
related services, in short, are taken for granted.
An issue addressed by the Workshop was how to institute a sense of stewardship or
accountability as a social and institutional strategy for infrastructure renewal. Thus, an
understanding of what infrastructure is, why it is important, and how to communicate that
importance is fundamental to any articulation of research needs for infrastructure.
Education
Education is critical for creating social awareness and responsibility. Significant opportunities
exist for developing primary school programs and educational tools to create a more adequate
understanding of infrastructure. The work needs to be interdisciplinary so that the appropriate
technical parameters are conveyed in a way that is easy to comprehend and that stimulates
interest.
59
These educational programs should not only target students, but various publics, decisionmakers,
and researchers themselves. Research is needed to identify, shape, and test programs that have
the potential to impact both research training and practice.
The training of the research teams that embark upon interdisciplinary infrastructure research is a
key aspect of the educational process and cannot be taken for granted. It can take many years for
researchers from different disciplines and different organizations to work together successfully
on interdisciplinary research. Research on the process of adaptation is critical to provide proper
guidelines for the functioning of these groups. Such research can, for example, draw upon
literature on the determinants of the behavior of experts, and the stability or validity of that
behavior, in order to understand the orientations of research team members from different
academic traditions, and how these factors could affect the outcome of interdisciplinary research.
Research is also needed to develop training programs to enhance the ability of researchers
engaged in interdisciplinary research to expand their perspectives on infrastructure issues.
Both short-term and long-term educational programs are necessary in order to address the
processes needed to change institutions and foster more integrated services and facilities and to
bring those changes about. In the short-term, we need to learn how to design, implement, and
evaluate an outreach program to help decisionmakers in government achieve a common
understanding of infrastructure issues over which they have control. This would enable them to
develop a more integral view of infrastructure systems and adopt policies and establish
institutions that reflect this view. In the longer term, we need to educate new professionals in
infrastructure management so they can respond more intelligently to current and future needs of
infrastructure planning, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and renewal.
5.3 CONCLUDING REMARKS
This report represents an initiative in the continuing search for approaches and means to improve
the functioning of infrastructure systems in the context of increasingly built, interdependent
environments. As noted earlier, there is a continuing need to revisit issues, since the social and
economic forces that shape the demand for infrastructure and its supporting institutions are in a
continual state of flux. In many ways, we are beyond problem-identification, and need research
on how to develop the processes to address and manage those problems that require integration
and to foster acceptance of and commitment to making such processes a reality.
60
APPENDICES
Contents
A. The Workshop Process and Organization
B. Workshop Summary and List of Workshop Planning Group Members; Workshop Agenda
C. Research Topics
D. List of Workshop Participants, Speakers, and Observers
E. Short Biographies of Workshop Participants
F. Research Questions; Short Papers by Participants
61
APPENDIX A. The Workshop Process and Organization
The Workshop planning group was assembled in early 1996. The group consisted of the
National Science Foundation (NSF) project manager, Dr. Priscilla P. Nelson, who coordinates
the Civil Infrastructure Systems (CIS) at NSF, two faculty members from New York
University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service who served as Principal
Investigator and co-Principal Investigator, three faculty members from the Civil and
Environmental Engineering Department of Polytechnic University, and three faculty members
from other universities chosen by the National Science Foundation and designated as Workshop
co-chairs. The Planning Group designed the Workshop, which was made flexible to
accommodate changes in organization and focus, depending upon how it evolved.
Thirty-five participants were selected to represent numerous disciplines. The process for the
selection of participants involved obtaining lists of potential participants from Workshop
Planning Group members and from NSF directorates. The NSF invited observers as well,
representing numerous organizations, including principal investigators from current NSF-funded
projects in the area of integrated infrastructure research.
Prior to the Workshop, participants were asked to prepare short papers, addressing any one of a
series of questions developed by the planning group pertaining to infrastructure research needs.
Participants were given the opportunity to revise their papers and submit research items after the
Workshop concluded, to be incorporated into the Workshop report. These questions and the
responses are contained in Appendix F.
At the Workshop, participants were randomly assigned to each of the three work groups.
The Workshop commenced with presentations by the co-chairs or their representatives - Tom
O’Rourke, Roger Stough (substituting for Kingsley Haynes), and Arden Bement - to orient the
group to Workshop issues. The groups then met in breakout sessions to review and discuss the
material, and decide upon a framework for each group report.
The preliminary findings were presented to the entire Workshop by each group in plenary
sessions, led by the co-chairs Bement, Grava (substituting for Kingsley Haynes), and O’Rourke.
Participants reconvened in breakout groups, and writing assignments for the report were made. A
final summary statement was made to the Workshop in a plenary session. After the Workshop
concluded, members of each group submitted drafts of their sections to be incorporated with
editing and some modification into the Workshop report. The principal investigators along with
the co-chairs assembled the group reports and produced the final Workshop document, with
input from the rest of the Planning Group members. The draft report was circulated in August to
Workshop participants for final input and commentary.
A-1
Composition of Workshop Groups
Group 1. Urban Concentrations
Group 1 consisted of fourteen participants, including two Workshop Planning Group members.
Several observers also contributed to the Group 1 deliberations, thereby enriching the content of
the discussions and expanding the scope of ideas and concepts covered. Group 1 was chaired by
Thomas D. O’Rourke, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University.
In addition to the Chair, the members of Group 1 were:
Name
Affiliation
Participants:
Henry L. Michel
Luis Suarez-Villa
Arthur Kressner
Robert M. Schwab
Lester B. Lave
Anthony J. DiBrita
Joel A. Tarr
Alan F. Karr
John Ramage
Geoffrey J.D. Hewings
William J. Petak
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Inc.
University of California (Irvine)
Con Edison
University of Maryland
Carnegie Mellon University
Brooklyn Union Gas
Carnegie Mellon University
National Institute of Statistical Sciences
CH2M Hill
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Southern California
Planning Group Members:
Angelos Protopapas
Rae Zimmerman
Polytechnic University
New York University
Observers:
Ezra Ehrenkrantz
Richard G. Little
William A. Wallace
New Jersey Institute of Technology
National Research Council
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
A-2
Group 2. Infrastructure and Interurban and Suburban Networks
Group 2, consisting of eleven participants, was initially organized and lead by Roger R. Stough
(first day) who established the basic format. He built upon the work of Kingsley Haynes, a
member of the Workshop Planning Group from its inception. Thereafter, the group was chaired
by Sigurd Grava of Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Inc. and Professor of Planning at
Columbia University, who also assumed the responsibility for leading the group throughout the
rest of the Workshop and assembling the material at the conclusion of the seminar.
The members of Group 2 in addition to the Chair were:
Name
Affiliation
Participants:
Hank Courtright
Charles Herrick
Frannie Humplick
Robert Paaswell
Joseph Perkowski
Henry Peyrebrune
Karen Polenske
James Roberts
Jeff Wright
EPRI
Princeton Economic Research, Inc.
World Bank
City University of New York
Bechtel
Consultant
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
California Department of Transportation
Purdue University
Planning Group Members:
John Falcocchio
Polytechnic University
The overall topic was divided into parts and spokespersons were selected for each one. The
original organization was slightly modified and resulted in the following organization for the
report:
Basic conditions
Demand issues
Supply issues
Models
Institutional concerns
Implications for education
-
S. Grava
H. Courtright
J. Wright
R. Paaswell, J. Wright
C. Herrick, H. Peyrebrune, J. Perkowski, J. Roberts
K. Polenske
A-3
Group 3. Infrastructure Sustainability
The group consisted of fifteen Workshop participants and several observers who contributed
valuable insights and suggestions. Group 3 was chaired by Arden Bement, Jr., Basil S. Turner
Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Purdue University. The other members of Group 3, in
addition to the Chair, were:
Name:
Affiliation:
Participants:
Harvey M. Bernstein
Nancy Rutledge Connery
Thomas W. Eagar
Eugene Fasullo
John W. Fisher
Benjamin F. Hobbs
T.R. Lakshamanan
Andrew Lemer
Dick Netzer
Della Roy
Martin Wachs
Gene Willeke
Civil Engineering Research Foundation
Consultant
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Polytechnic University
Lehigh University
Johns Hopkins University
U.S. Department of Transportation
The MATRIX Group
New York University
Pennsylvania State University
University of California, Berkeley
Miami University
Planning Group Members:
Ilan Juran
Roy Sparrow
Polytechnic University
New York University
Observers:
Richard J. L. Martin
Neil Grigg
Georgia Tech University
Colorado State University
A-4
APPENDIX B. Workshop Summary and List of Workshop Planning Group Members;
Workshop Agenda
WORKSHOP ON INTEGRATED RESEARCH FOR CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURE
Summary (as distributed prior to the Workshop)
Background and Rationale
The nation continues to experience major problems in the performance of its infrastructure in
spite of the considerable investment of resources to expand capacity, increase accessibility, and
exploit innovative technologies for infrastructure improvement. Some problems can be solved
with incremental changes that retain the current specialized and categorical organization of
infrastructure endeavors. Others, however, require a broad, sweeping, interdisciplinary
perspective. Problems in this latter group may require the interaction of the sciences with
engineering to address a materials problem, to identify statistical trends in performance, or to
understand the environmental impacts of the design, construction or operation of a facility.
Solving these broader problems also often requires the perspective of the social sciences in order
to understand the nature of client perceptions and demands with respect to infrastructure
performance and the overall social context of these facilities: who they serve and how
effectively. Moreover, an understanding of the interaction of human resources and engineered
systems is critical to system safety and reliability and involves many disciplines. Finally, all of
these situations inevitably involve decision and management sciences to conceptualize the
interfaces from a systems perspective in order to understand the problems and provide a
framework for intelligent investment decisions.
Current practice indicates that the above issues cannot be addressed in an isolated sequential or
parallel manner, but rather they need to be analyzed simultaneously as they interconnect and
interact with one another. There is a need for new language, concepts, and approaches that can
deal with the integrated world of infrastructure, including scientific, technical, social, political,
and economic factors.
Workshop Objectives or Purpose
The overall aim of the Workshop is to provide insights that can be used by the National Science
Foundation (NSF) to develop a research agenda and educational programs aimed at exploring
interdisciplinary aspects of infrastructure performance that require an integrated perspective. The
NSF has held several workshops already, emphasizing approaches to infrastructure issues within
various engineering and scientific disciplines. This Workshop builds on these by adopting a
cross-disciplinary approach to infrastructure issues. The scope of the Workshop is urban
infrastructure, which pertains to services or functions and their associated physical facilities that
support social and economic activities in urban areas. In particular, the workshop emphasizes
environmental, transportation, and energy infrastructure.
B-1
Workshop Process and Format
This Workshop will bring together professionals who have been actively involved in the research
and operational aspects of urban infrastructure. The Workshop will last about 2-1/2 days.
Participants will be asked to address some of the issues the workgroup has targeted as well as
raise new issues and present new perspectives. A report will be submitted to the NSF at the
conclusion of the workshop.
Project Organization: Members of the Workshop Planning Group
NSF Program Manager
Dr. Priscilla Nelson, Program Director of Geomechanical, Geotechnical and Geo-Environmental
Systems and Coordinator of Civil Infrastructure Systems.
New York University:
Professor Rae Zimmerman,
Professor Roy Sparrow
Principal Investigator
Co-Principal Investigator
Phone: (212) 998-7432
Phone: (212) 998-7505
FAX: (212) 995-3890
FAX: (212) 995-3890
E-mail: [email protected]
E-mail: [email protected]
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
New York University
4 Washington Square North
New York, NY 10003
Polytechnic University:
John Falcocchio, Professor of Transportation
Ilan Juran, Professor and Head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department
Angelos Protopapas, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Co-Chairpersons:
Group 1: Urban Concentrations
Thomas D. O’Rourke, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Cornell U.
Group 2: Interurban and Suburban Networks*
Sigurd Grava, Professor of Planning, Columbia University
Kingsley Haynes, Professor of Public Policy,
George Mason University
Roger Stough, Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University
Group 3: Arden Bement, Professor of Engineering, Purdue University
NOTE: *Kingsley Haynes was initially the appointed member of the planning working group,
and in that capacity, participated in structuring the workshop and Group 2’s presentation. Dr.
Haynes was unable to attend the workshop, and Roger Stough gave the initial presentation, and
organized the group. Sigurd Grava agreed to assume Group 2’s responsibilities thereafter,
including the organization of that group’s report.
B-2
Workshop Agenda (Final)
WORKSHOP ON INTEGRATED RESEARCH FOR CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURE
July 15-17, 1996
Ritz Carlton Hotel (Downtown), Washington, DC
This workshop is sponsored by the National Science Foundation
MONDAY, July 15
12:00-1:00
1:00-2:30
2:30-2:45
2:45-5:30
6:00-7:00
7:00-9:00
Registration
Plenary (Workshop Planning Group Members)
Break
Three Breakout Groups convene
Refreshments and Cash Bar
Workshop Participant Dinner (no observers) - Speaker: Dr. Joseph Bordogna,
Director of the Directorate for Engineering, NSF
TUESDAY, July 16
8-8:30
8:30-9:45
10:00-10:30
10:30-12
12:00-1:30
Breakfast
Three Breakout Groups convene (continuation)
Break
Group #1 Presentation
Workshop Participant Lunch (no observers) - Speaker: Mortimer Downey,
Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation
1:30-3:00
Open Session (observer participation)
3:00-3:15
Break
3:15-4:30
Group #2 Presentation
4:30-5:30
Open Session (observer participation)
Dinner on Own
WEDNESDAY, July 17
8-8:30
8:30-11:00
11:00-12:00
12:00-1:00
1:00-2:30
Breakfast
Group #3 Presentation (with observer participation)
Continuation of Breakout Groups: Next Steps; Writing Assignments
Plenary Summary Session and Wrap-up
Working Group Lunch
B-3
EXAMPLES OF INFRASTRUCTURE FACILITIES
(excluding associated services)
Infrastructure System
ELECTRIC POWER
Components
power generating plants, substations, switchyards, transmission
line towers, distribution system equipment, energy control centers,
communication systems and equipment, emergency power backup
equipment, buildings, emergency operations center, service and
maintenance facilities
GAS AND LIQUID
pipelines, terminals, control systems, communication systems,
FUELS
pump and compressor stations, storage tanks, refineries (piping,
process equipment, control and safety systems), vessels
TELECOMMUNICATION switching facilities, cable distribution systems, power supplies,
switching and data processing equipment, heating, ventilating and
air conditioning equipment, emergency power equipment,
buildings, transceiver towers, repeater station facilities
TRANSPORTATION
Highways
pavements, bridges, tunnels, embankments, slopes, avalanche and
rock shelters, retaining walls, signal and lighting systems,
maintenance facilities
Railroads
track, bridges, tunnels, embankments, slopes, avalanche and rock
shelters, retaining walls, stations, platforms, signal and control
systems, freight handling facilities, rolling stock, maintenance
facilities
Mass Transit
elevated track and station structures, bridges, tunnels, subway
stations, platforms, rail power, overhead catenary, signal and
control systems, rolling stock, maintenance facilities
Ports and Waterways
wharves, quays, walls, bulkheads, cofferdams, sea bunds,
breakwaters, dry docks (with vessel), freight handling facilities,
roll-on and roll-off structures, bridges, pavements, aprons, canal
locks, terminals, buildings, fuel storage facilities
Air Transportation
runways, control towers, bridges, embankments, air traffic control
Facilities
equipment terminals, buildings, passenger loading/unloading
bridges, shuttle/mobile lounges, fuel storage facilities, freight
handling equipment, signal and control systems, maintenance
facilities, air route traffic control centers and associated
telecommunication facilities
WATER AND SEWER
dams and diversion structures, pipelines, tunnels, aqueducts,
canals, reservoirs, tanks, wells, pumps, mechanical and electrical
equipment, buildings, electric power and emergency back-up
equipment
Source: Civil Infrastructure Systems Task Group (CISTG), NSF, Civil Infrastructure Systems
Research: Strategic Issues. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, January 1993. Page
9.
B-4
APPENDIX C. Research Topics
C-1.0 INTRODUCTION
The issue of integrated infrastructure research was approached from three different perspectives:
infrastructure in urban concentrations, infrastructure in less dense suburban areas, and
infrastructure sustainability. Numerous research topics and questions emerged, however, they
fell within a number of common categories. These categories were: integrated infrastructure,
institutional research (including finance), analytical frameworks and capabilities, and education.
The topics listed below are drawn from the previous chapters (sections are identified in
parenthesis) where they were discussed, and linked to barriers to integration. The bulleted issues
represent the major research questions that were identified in the Workshop.
C-1.1 INTEGRATED INFRASTRUCTURE RESEARCH
Integrating infrastructure into the fabric of society was a common Workshop theme; yet, it is
well-recognized that a greater understanding is needed of when, how, what to integrate, and
where to introduce integration. Thus, the integration concept poses a number of research
questions in and of itself (3.1, 3.3):
Applicability:
•
How far should integration go?
•
What infrastructure systems and geographic areas are amenable to integration and which are
not?
•
How does geography play a role in determining the nature and extent of integration of
infrastructure?
Effectiveness:
•
Does integration improve system effectiveness, and if so, under what conditions?
•
When are integrated services better than separate ones, and what factors determine which
option to choose?
Kinds of Integration:
•
What kind of linkages define geographic, functional, institutional, informational, conceptual,
and interdisciplinary integration?
C-1
•
Does the manner in which infrastructure development policies and programs are integrated
depend on the kind of land-use pattern, i.e., center city/suburb; undifferentiated sprawl;
network of nodes; and combinations of these?
Mechanisms for Integration:
•
What mechanisms should be developed or enhanced to achieve different types and desirable
levels of integration?
Support Requirements:
•
How can interdisciplinary integration be accomplished in order to support infrastructure
research?
•
What technological, economical, and institutional demands does integrated infrastructure
impose?
C-1.2 INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH
Finance
An important overall research area is the design and development of financing mechanisms that
fully address the costs associated with user needs and usage patterns, technological constraints
and capacities, and the cost of design, build, and maintenance functions over the lifetime of
facilities, that is, the prevention of deterioration. (2.3, 4.2) A number of specific research points
relate to this overall objective.
Pricing and Demand:
•
How can pricing be designed to reflect technical and social characteristics? How can
infrastructure be priced in a way that promotes desired user behavior and at the same time is
equitable? (2.3)
•
To what extent is the demand for infrastructure services related to price? What non-price
factors influence demand? (3.2)
Life-Cycle Engineering (LCE):
•
Can the concept of LCE be clarified to provide a guide for accurately costing and financing
infrastructure? (2.1)
•
How do traditional life-cycle costing methods introduce barriers to new technology? (4.2)
C-2
Problems of Cost Estimation as a Basis for Financing:
•
How are the costs of infrastructure maintenance/renewal/construction associated with the
pattern of population settlements and growth? (3.2)
•
What are the financial implications, including cost impacts, of increasing the flexibility of
infrastructure systems to accommodate future changes in use or demand and other
uncertainties? (2.3, 4.1)
•
How does productivity influence infrastructure costs? What are the appropriate measures of
this relationship? (2.3)
Financial Management:
•
How can institutions be redesigned to support the financial needs of maintenance in a
consistent way (e.g., awarding grants for maintenance as well as new construction)?
•
Given the very large investment in infrastructure, how can a systematic accounting system
consistently measure and communicate direct and indirect costs of infrastructure and
combine both public and private infrastructure valuation? (2.3)
•
Has performance-based budgeting improved the quality of infrastructure?
Other Factors:
•
How can benefits that are often considered indirect, intangible, and external (e.g., energy and
time savings, longer lifetime and hence less disruption from renewal) be factored into the
return on investment of research and development in order to encourage and help finance
investments? (3.0)
•
How can the value of in-place infrastructure be determined, and when should it be a basis for
establishing rehabilitation priorities? (3.3)
Technology Investment (2.2, 4.2)
•
How can financial and institutional arrangements be brought to bear upon the problem of
introducing new technologies for infrastructure?
•
What public-private partnerships can be identified for technology investment, and how can
they be encouraged?
•
What institutions can address barriers to technology transfer from a multi-disciplinary and
international perspective?
Institutional Arrangements and Decision-making: Service Provision
C-3
If a major problem with the management of renovation and repair projects in dense urban areas
is the failure to minimize disruption and the cost to users and non-users, then agencies
responsible for infrastructure renewal have to coordinate their activities. Various models for
coordination need to be explored, such as the following examples of demonstration projects
identified during the Workshop: (1) Create utility corridors (“utilidors”) in which utilities
coordinate construction, maintenance and operation functions. A barrier to creating these
corridors is a lack of incentive for utilities to coordinate with one another. Each utility has its
own resource base, and therefore has no incentive to work collectively; (2) Select one area for
which everything can be repaired or renovated at the same time, such as a dense urban area like
Wall Street or a blighted area; (3) In the suburbs, try isolated rather than integrated infrastructure
systems; (4) Use redeveloped areas, e.g., Fort Ord, California which can be ideal locations
within which to conduct integration experiments.
Public Engagement:
•
How can one overcome the problem of building public trust in the larger institutions that
typically manage infrastructure?
•
How can economic institutions be made to focus on the value of infrastructure in order to
demonstrate the benefits of infrastructure to the public and obtain its support?
•
How can institutions and financial incentives be designed to promote stewardship,
ownership, and entitlement, which encourage a sense of responsibility and accountability for
infrastructure? (2.3)
Public/private Partnerships:
•
Under what circumstances can partnering be effective for the provision of infrastructure
services? In such cases, how can differences among the partners be overcome? When
appropriate, what mechanisms can be used to encourage collaboration through partnerships?
(2.4)
•
How can government facilities or university-based engineering research centers play a role in
analyzing and adopting new technologies and testing new materials? Can their capacities be
improved for analyzing the full range of impacts of those technologies and the institutional
requirements for their integration into existing systems? (4.2)
•
Can contracting procedures be adapted upstream to promote coordination among
governments, public/private partnerships, and other means of cooperation? (4.4)
C-4
LCE:
•
What mechanisms can be used to bring together the disciplines needed to address all of the
factors that affect life-cycle estimates? (4.1)
•
In particular, how can institutions, used to thinking in terms of quarterly and annual budget
targets, integrate life-cycle thinking into their financing and budgeting operations?
Total Quality Management (TQM) (3.5):
•
What role can TQM play in promoting an integrated perspective for infrastructure? In
particular, what financing mechanisms and engineering concepts (such as LCE) can take
advantage of TQM to promote an integrated thinking about infrastructure?
•
How can a line-item orientation to budgeting accommodate TQM ideas?
•
Can concepts such as performance-based budgeting and the outcome-oriented provisions of
the Government Performance and Results Act meet these needs?
Other Factors:
•
How do infrastructure institutions interact with each other, with “non-infrastructure”
institutions such as the finance and insurance industries, and with governing agencies? How
can these relationships be improved? (4.0)
•
How do we manage interaction effects among infrastructure facilities?
•
How will political deregulation impact integration and coordination among infrastructure
agencies?
•
Can institutions be designed to take into account transaction costs associated with integrated
infrastructure concerns?
Infrastructure Management for Planning, Design, Rehabilitation, and Development
Design (2.1, 3.5, 4.1):
•
How can the infrastructure-design process take into account differential rates of change of
infrastructure systems, i.e., the fact that infrastructure facilities can change rapidly, social
systems less rapidly, and culture very slowly? (4.0)
•
How can political considerations and barriers be taken into account when developing design
strategies and conducting design reviews?
C-5
•
Can design simultaneously accommodate maintainability and renewal in spite of the fact that
design, construction, operation, and maintenance are separate functions?
•
What institutional frameworks are necessary for initial infrastructure designs to adapt to
changing technology and population needs?
•
Which models for infrastructure design are suitable for different spatial models of population
settlements: stand alone, interactive, or flexible?
Project Management (4.4):
•
Given that project management is a basic unit of infrastructure decision-making, how can
project management adopt a broader perspective by integrating other disciplines, yet retain a
focus upon specialized and technical requirements?
•
What impediments and performance issues exist in project management that detract from
infrastructure service quality, such as inadequate criteria for technical performance and user
needs?
Database Management
The development, accessibility and management of infrastructure databases are central to the
integration of technical, institutional, social, and environmental concerns for infrastructure and
to the building of accountability, public confidence, and trust in infrastructure. Data is only
useful if it is evaluated (used), judged relative to a framework (i.e., it is tied to a purpose),
timely, and accessible. In fact, database management can serve as an important infrastructure
management tool.
Database Design:
•
How can infrastructure databases pertaining to performance, monitoring and diagnostic tools
and the research and development support associated with these databases be designed to
incorporate or reflect social, economic, and environmental impacts of infrastructure
facilities? What are the institutional and political requirements to manage these databases?
(4.1, 4.2)
•
How can data be made invulnerable to changing data technologies?
•
How can databases be standardized and integrated geographically, functionally, etc.? What
software and hardware support systems can accomplish this? (2.1, 2.2)
•
How can advanced information technologies, which integrate human and physical aspects of
infrastructure (such as GIS) be developed, applied, and disseminated? (2.6)
C-6
Data Utilization, Access and Exchange:
•
How can institutional barriers to the exchange of data be overcome? Are the barriers related
to cost, competition, or communication? What processes are needed to promote data
exchange?
•
How can the utility of data be communicated to people so they will see its benefits and be
willing to share data?
•
How can organizational resources, such as infrastructure technology clearinghouses, be
designed for the collection, interpretation, dissemination, and overall management of
infrastructure databases, including maintaining their integrity over time and adjusting to
changes in information technology? (2.1)
•
Given that the identification, selection, and accessibility of data are important objectives for
the success of an integrated approach to infrastructure, what processes can be developed and
how can they be developed to enable users to sort through information, and decide what is
appropriate in order to avoid information overload? (3.0)
C-1. 3 ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS AND CAPABILITIES
Systems Approach (2.1)
•
How can past experiences with systems theory be applied to infrastructure?
•
To what extent is systems theory of value in light of the fact that it may not be expressed in
the same terms as engineering and non-engineering disciplines involved in infrastructure
development?
•
How can systems thinking about infrastructure be promoted without simply adding another
layer? How can incentives be designed to encourage people to really work together to
promote a systems approach for infrastructure?
Design of Performance Measures
•
How can traditional performance measures be extended to reflect customer needs, the
environmental effects of infrastructure facilities, and other factors considered at one time to
be externalities? How can performance measures be designed to take into account
instabilities and variations in those factors? (4.3)
•
How can performance measures be broadened and integrated into infrastructure management
and institutional learning as a basis of introducing technologies? What tracking mechanisms
are necessary to ensure that such integration occurs?
C-7
•
How can one ensure that performance measures address how systems are developed and
managed? Performance measures vary for different missions, i.e., system maintenance and
quality control vs. innovation. Performance measures often direct a system’s characteristics
and behavior, and poorly designed measures may shape the system in the wrong way.
Linkages are needed between performance measures and the capabilities of the institutions to
manage them: the capabilities have to be built in as part of the adoption of the measures.
Life-Cycle Engineering (LCE) Techniques
•
Can LCE techniques be more clearly defined and adapted to take into account interactions
between social, economic, and environmental systems on the one hand, and infrastructure
systems on the other hand? How can these techniques reflect changes that occur over the
lifetime of a facility? In particular, if renewal becomes a major part of infrastructure
services, how can LCE be used to interpret its impact on the user in terms of safety,
convenience, etc.?
•
To what extent will alternative renewal options alter cost estimates generated by LCE, and in
particular, how can costs and benefits to the users (e.g., in terms of the timeliness and quality
of service delivery), recycling, and energy use be factored into LCE? How can innovations
such as in-situ recycling, reusable structures, and designing for multiple uses (which all
reflect multiple objectives) be absorbed into life-cycle estimates?
•
What process can be invoked to incorporate flexibility into LCE in order to allow for
changing infrastructure goals, needs and conditions? (2.2)
Models
Models are commonly used to integrate databases across disciplines. These models need to
address the many dimensions of infrastructure. Although modeling has been common for
decades, it has both advantages and disadvantages that should be targeted by infrastructure
research.
Safety:
•
Since risks affect public acceptance of infrastructure, what models can be developed and
applied to analyze safety more accurately? (4.1)
Quality:
•
The quality of infrastructure is a function not only of its lifetime (which in turn depends on
factors such as operation and maintenance) but also of social patterns and expectations. How
can models be developed to integrate these factors? (4.1)
C-8
Engineering and Non-Engineering Systems:
•
Since forecasting combines engineering and non-engineering system characteristics into a
common framework, what models and principles are available to understand, predict and
analyze these system trends in an integrated way, and recognize and reduce the uncertainties
in such endeavors? (2.2, 3.1, 4.1)
•
How can structurally and geographically fixed facilities accommodate changing usage, and
moreover, how can forecasts be integrated early in the design of facilities to make this
happen? (3.1, 4.1)
Public Involvement:
•
To what extent can models be used to understand participation and communication among
stakeholders with respect to infrastructure issues? (3.4)
Supply and Demand:
•
Do current models of supply and demand adequately consider the appropriate factors that
contribute to characterizing levels and directions of infrastructure supply and demand? (3.2,
3.3, 3.4)
Decision-Making and Management:
•
How can traditional models for decision-making, risk assessment, emergency management,
hazard analysis, probability, and reliability estimation be applied to infrastructure
management? (2.1)
Evaluation/Test-bedding:
•
How can test-bedding (evaluation methods) be promoted as a means of testing economic and
social models for infrastructure improvement? (2.3)
Case Method:
•
What are the limitations of taking a case-study approach to determine future outcomes? (3.5)
C-1.4 EDUCATION
The educational aspects of infrastructure research take many forms and address many different
groups. Education should be flexible enough to meet changing infrastructure goals. It has to
respect the need for specialization on the one hand and broad-based, contextual thinking on the
other hand.
C-9
•
Can engineers acting as either specialists or project managers be trained to manage
performance and cost issues associated with infrastructure quality, and learn public
communication skills? (4.1, 4.4)
•
Given the relatively recent, thin, and uncertain knowledge base for LCE, what is the
appropriate curriculum for educating students and practicing engineers and non-engineering
professionals in LCE concepts and methods? What models are available from industry? (4.1)
•
How can educational curricula incorporate the new research needed to integrate social,
behavioral, economic, and environmental sciences into engineering? (4.2)
•
What kind of educational programs can be developed over the entire range of schooling
(from K-12 through university education and professional training)? (2.5, 3.6)
•
What kinds of programs can be used to educate the public to promote or foster a sense of
entitlement and responsibility toward infrastructure? (2.5)
•
How can pilot programs and demonstration projects be used to promote education and
communication about new infrastructure problems and technologies, and thereby make
public involvement more effective? (2.6)
C - 10
APPENDIX D. List of Workshop Participants, Speakers, and Observers
Participants
1. Harvey M. Bernstein
President
Civil Engineering Research Foundation
2. George Bugliarello, Ph.D.
Chancellor
Polytechnic University
3. Nancy Rutledge Connery
Independent Consultant
4. Henry A. Courtright, P.E.
Vice President, Client and External Relations
Electric Power Research Institute
5. Anthony J. DiBrita, P.E.
Senior Vice President, Engineering Construction Group
Brooklyn Union Gas
6. Thomas W. Eagar, Ph.D.
POSCO Professor of Materials Engineering and Head
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
7. Eugene J. Fasullo, P.E.
Industry Professor
Polytechnic University
8. John W. Fisher, Ph.D., P.E.
Joseph T. Stuart Professor of Civil Engineering,
Director, Center for Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems
Lehigh University
9. Sigurd Grava, Ph.D.
Professor of Urban Planning
Columbia University
Technical Director for Planning and Vice President
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Inc.
D-1
10. Charles N. Herrick, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
Princeton Economic Research, Inc.
11. Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, Ph.D.
Professor and Director, Regional Economics Applications Laboratory
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
12. Benjamin F. Hobbs, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor of Geography and Environmental Engineering
The Johns Hopkins University
13. Frannie F. Humplick, Ph.D.
Infrastructure Economist
World Bank
14. Alan F. Karr, Ph.D.
Associate Director
National Institute of Statistical Sciences
Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
15. Arthur Kressner
Department Manager, Research and Development
Consolidated Edison
16. T.R. Lakshmanan, Ph.D.
Director, Bureau of Transportation Statistics
U.S. Department of Transportation
17. Lester B. Lave, Ph.D.
James H. Higgins Professor of Economics
Carnegie-Mellon University
18. Andrew C. Lemer
President
The Matrix Group
19. Henry L. Michel, P.E.
Chairman Emeritus
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas
20. Dick Netzer, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics and Public Administration
New York University
D-2
21. Robert E. Paaswell, Ph.D., P.E.
Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering and Director,
Region II University Transportation Research Center
City University of New York
22. Joseph C. Perkowski, Ph.D.
Manager of Advanced Civil Systems
Bechtel
23. William J. Petak, Ph.D.
Professor and Executive Director, Institute of Safety and Systems Management
University of Southern California
24. Henry L. Peyrebrune, Ph.D., P.E.
Independent Consultant
25. Karen R. Polenske, Ph.D.
Professor of Regional Political Economy and Planning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
26. John Ramage, P.E.
Senior Vice President
CH2MHill
27. Charles Revelle
Professor
The Johns Hopkins University
28. James E. Roberts, P.E.
Director, Engineering Service Center, and Chief Structures
Engineer
California Department of Transportation
29. Della M. Roy, Ph.D., P.E.
Professor of Materials Science Emerita
Pennsylvania State University
30. Robert Schwab, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
The Johns Hopkins University
31. Luis Suarez-Villa, Ph.D.
Professor of Urban and Regional Planning
University of California at Irvine
32. Joel A. Tarr, Ph.D.
D-3
Richard S. Caliguiri Professor of Urban and Environmental History and Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
33. Martin Wachs, Ph.D.
Director of the University of California Transportation Center,
Professor of City and Regional Planning, and Professor of
Civil Engineering
University of California at Berkeley
34. Gene Willeke
Director
Institute of Environmental Science
Miami University
35. Jeff R. Wright, Ph.D.
Professor and Director, Water Resources Research Center
Purdue University
D-4
Guest Speakers
Joseph Bordogna, Ph.D
Assistant Director
Directorate for Engineering
National Science Foundation
Mortimer L. Downey
Deputy Secretary
U.S. Department of Transportation
D-5
Observers
1. Jim Brown
BIO/BIR
National Science Foundation
2. Robin Cantor
SBE/DRMS
National Science Foundation
3. Michael S. Delello
Director, Washington Relations
Electric Power Research Institute
4. Oscar Dillon
ENG/CMS
National Science Foundation
5. Brenda Myers Bohlke
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas
6. Catherine Eckel
National Science Foundation
7. Mark Ehlen
Economist, Office of Applied Statistics
National Institute of Standards and Technology
8. Ezra Ehrenkrantz
Sponsor Chair, Center for Architecture and Building Science Research
New Jersey Institute of Technology
9. Andrew F. Euston
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
10. Virginia Fairweather
Civil Engineering Magazine
American Society of Civil Engineers
11. Al Grant
Rebuild America Coalition
12. John Griffin
Federal Laboratory Consortium
D-6
13. Neil S. Grigg
Department Head, Civil Engineering
Colorado State University
14. Yacov Haimes
Director, Center for Risk Management
University of Virginia
15. Gen. E.R. Heiberg III
Heiberg Associates, Inc.
16. Miriam Heller
University of Houston
17. G. Patrick Johnson
ENG/DMII/SBIR
National Science Foundation
18. Richard G. Little
Director, Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment
National Research Council
19. Richard J.L. Martin
Professor
Georgia Tech
20. Joseph Mauro
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
21. Cora Marrett
SBE
National Science Foundation
22. Dan Newlon
SBE/SBER
National Science Foundation
23. Joy Pauschke
ENG/EEC
National Science Foundation
24. Robert Reynik
MPS Coordinator, Integration of Research and Education
National Science Foundation
25. Chanan Singh
D-7
ENG/ECS/Power Systems
National Science Foundation
26. Glen S. Thurgood
Professor
Brigham Young University
27. William A. Wallace
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
28. Edward Weiner
Department of Transportation
29. David Wojick
Powervision
D-8
APPENDIX E. Biographies of Workshop Participants and Planning Group Members
WORKSHOP PLANNING GROUP
Priscilla Nelson (NSF Liaison) Dr. Nelson is currently Program Director for the Geomechanical,
Geotechnical, and Geo-Environmental Systems (G3S/CMS) and Acting Senior Engineering
Advisor in the Directorate for Engineering. She is also coordinator of the NSF Working Group
on Civil Infrastructure Systems. Prior to joining the National Science Foundation, Dr. Nelson
was Professor and John Focht Teaching Fellow in the Department of Civil Engineering at the
University of Texas at Austin. She was on leave from Texas to be at the National Science
Foundation. Dr. Nelson has a national and international reputation in geological and rock
engineering and the particular application of underground construction. She has served as
consultant to large underground construction projects in the U.S., and was an integral participant
in developing the State of Texas’ proposal for the Superconducting Super Collider facility. She
has been a member of the U.S. National Committee for Rock Mechanics and the U.S. National
Committee for Tunneling Technology and is the U.S. delegate to the International Tunneling
Association’s Working Group on Mechanized Excavation. In addition, Dr. Nelson is an active
member of many professional organizations, including the American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE), where she serves on the Executive Committee of the Geotechnical Engineering
Division, and the American Underground-Construction Association (AUA). She is also a First
President of the American Rock Mechanics Association, and one of the few academics and
women to be elected to The Moles, an association for the heavy construction industry. Dr.
Nelson is the author of over 90 reports and publications, and has received both the Basic
Research Award (1993) and the Case History Award (1988) from the U.S. National Committee
for Rock Mechanics (NAS/NAE). Education: B.S., Geology, University of Rochester; M.A.,
Geology, Indiana University; M.S., Structural Engineering, University of Oklahoma; Ph.D.,
Geotechnical Engineering, Cornell University.
Rae Zimmerman (Project Director/Co-PI) is Professor of Planning and Public Administration
and Director of the Urban Planning Program at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner
Graduate School of Public Service, and is a member and a former Director of the School’s
management specialization. Dr. Zimmerman is President of the Society for Risk Analysis,
which is an interdisciplinary, international professional society of over 2,000 scientists,
engineers, and social scientists. Dr. Zimmerman’s teaching and research interests are in
environmental planning and management, environmental risk management, and urban
infrastructure. She has directed numerous multidisciplinary research grants in these areas funded
by federal agencies and commissions including the U.S. EPA, the National Science Foundation
and U.S. Department of Commerce, as well as state and local agencies. In the area of
infrastructure, she directed the New York State needs assessment in transportation, water supply,
and wastewater for the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee; a study of an offshore island
complex and New York State’s early outreach program and critique of policies for the statewide
transportation master plan for the New York State Department of Transportation; and water
supply, wastewater, and transportation forecasts for a rapidly growing town in New York State.
E-1
She is currently Project Director and Co-PI of the National Science Foundation-sponsored
research project on environmental and transportation infrastructure performance in addition to
directing the workshop on integrated research in civil infrastructure. Other ongoing research
includes a U.S. EPA-funded project on farmers’ attitudes toward using agricultural practices that
are protective of water quality. In a consulting capacity, she conducted portions of
environmental impact statements and regulatory support for various construction projects for
highways and other civil infrastructure and has provided regulatory and technical support for
New York City’s combined sewer overflow program, the sludge management program, and
water quality facility planning. Dr. Zimmerman is a consultant to the U.S. EPA’s Superfund
program (Region II) where she has been analyzing demographic patterns near inactive hazardous
waste sites. Current professional appointments include Member of the Board of Scientific
Counselors of the U.S. EPA’s Office of Research and Development, the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation’s Air Toxics Workgroup and Comparative Risk
Ranking Project Steering Committee, and the American Arbitration Association’s Panel of
Arbitrators. She is a former Member of panels, boards and project teams for the U.S. Congress
Office of Technology Assessment, the Risk Science, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis risk
management reform group, the New York State Department of Health Advisory Committee on
Safe Drinking Water, and the Environmental Institute for Waste Management Studies of the
University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa). Dr. Zimmerman authored Governmental Management of
Chemical Risk (1990) and numerous journal articles and book chapters on environmental and
infrastructure issues, including most recently, global warming impacts on infrastructure (in
Metropolitan New York in the Greenhouse: Infrastructure Planning for an Uncertain Future,
1996), impacts of the 1993 Mississippi floods (The Sciences, 1994) and “Hazardous Substance
Emergencies in New York City,” (with M. Gerrard, Disaster Management, 1994), “Issues of
Classification in Environmental Equity: How We Manage is How We Measure,” Fordham
Urban Law Journal, (Spring, 1994) and “Social Equity and Environmental Risk,” Risk Analysis:
An International Journal, (December, 1993). Education: A.B., Chemistry, U. of California,
Berkeley; Masters in City Planning, U. of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., Planning, Columbia University.
Roy Sparrow (Co-PI) is Professor of Public Administration at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate
School of Public Service, New York University, where he teaches courses in managing public
service organizations, strategic management, and improving public service organizations through
total quality management. Dr. Sparrow has conducted research into the barriers to regional
cooperation in transportation planning and policy-making, the role of the private sector in public
transportation in New York City, and has also helped develop a comprehensive bus service plan
for New York City. Recently, he helped developed and run a technical and managerial training
program for transportation planners and managers under the auspices of the New York
Metropolitan Transportation Council. He currently serves as Project Director for the Russian
Local Government Training Program, which will design and deliver a management development
program for public executives in Russia. Dr. Sparrow is also a Co-PI for the National Science
Foundation’s project examining the performance of the nation’s environmental and
transportation infrastructure. Prior grants have enabled him to assess the educational and
training needs of public transportation managers in New York and New Jersey and explore
structural factors in transportation policy-making. Dr. Sparrow is a member of the Committee
on Management and Productivity of the Transportation Research Board and sits on the Board of
Directors of the University Transportation Research Center (Region 2). Recent publications
E-2
have included, “Training Today’s Professional to Meet Tomorrow’s Transportation Needs:
ISTEA and the MPO,” (1994), and reports on private sector involvement in public transportation
planning. Administrative positions have included Acting Dean and Associate Dean at the
Wagner School. Education: B.A., Political Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill;
M.A., Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles; Ph.D., Political Science,
University of California, Los Angeles.
John C. Falcocchio is Professor of Transportation, Director of the Transportation Research
Institute, and Research Director of the Urban Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Center at
Polytechnic University in New York, where he has been a member of the faculty for 22 years.
Dr. Falcocchio’s expertise in the area of transportation includes traffic and transportation studies,
transportation systems analysis, travel demand and transportation system management, traffic
congestion and air pollution reduction strategies, coordination of land use and transportation, and
intelligent transportation systems. He has managed complex transportation projects both as an
educator/researcher and as practicing professional. He spent a four-year leave of absence
beginning in 1987, studying and modeling the traffic system in Manhattan for the Westside
Route 9A Reconstruction Project. Dr. Falcocchio is a founding partner of a major planning and
engineering consulting firm and a registered professional engineer in Pennsylvania, New York,
and California. He is currently directing a major initiative in ITS for the New York City
Department of Transportation which entails the use of cost-effective ITS technologies in
facilitating travel, improving the performance of multimodal transportation systems, and
increasing transportation safety. He is a member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers,
American Society of Civil Engineers, American Institute of Planners, Intelligent Transportation
Society of America, New York Academy of Sciences, and Chi Epsilon. He is also a member of
the Council on Transportation, the Manhattan Borough President’s transportation advisory
committee, and a past member of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council’s
Executive Director’s “Kitchen Cabinet,” and the Committee on the Transportation
Disadvantaged of the Transportation Research Board. Dr. Falcocchio is an author and co-author
of many technical papers and one book. Education: B.C.E., Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn;
Traffic Engineer Certificate, Bureau of Highway Traffic, Yale University; M.S., Transportation
Planning, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn; and Ph.D., Transportation Planning, Polytechnic
Institute of Brooklyn.
Ilan Juran is Head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Polytechnic
University of New York. At Polytechnic University, Dr. Juran has established a FrancoAmerican Cooperative Program for Urban Studies for Advancing the State of Practice in Urban
Infrastructure Engineering, Environmental Systems Management and Rehabilitation
Technologies. This cooperative program with the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees of
Paris covers five major infrastructure areas: transportation systems planning and management,
infrastructure rehabilitation technologies, municipal waste recycling, urban water quality
management and waste water treatment. Dr. Juran’s principle specialization is Ground
Improvement, and he has participated as Principle Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator in
major soil improvement projects in the United States and France. These projects focused on
feasibility assessment of innovative geotechnologies and/or their new engineering applications
and resulted in the development of testing techniques and engineering guidelines for the design
and construction of innovative reinforced soil systems. Dr. Juran is presently Chairman of the
E-3
Technical Committee on Ground Improvement, Reinforcement, and Grouting of the International
Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering. Prior positions include Associate
Director of the Soil Mechanics Teachings and Research Center of the Ecole Nationale des Ponts
et Chaussees in Paris, and Principal Investigator and Technical Director of the Geosynthetic
Research Laboratory at Louisiana State University. Among Dr. Juran’s many publications is the
article he co-authored titled, “Laboratory Model Study on Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil
Retaining Walls,” (ASCE Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, 1989). Education: B.Sc., Civil
Engineering, Technion, Haifa, Israel; Ph.D., Soil Mechanics, University of Paris VI; Sc.D. with
highest distinction, Applied Mechanics, University of Paris VI.
Angelos L. Protopapas is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at
Polytechnic University in New York, where he also serves as Chairman of the Department of
Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Undergraduate Curriculum and Standards Committee,
and Coordinator of the Water Resources Program. His interests involve the numerical and
analytical treatment of flow and contaminant transport in surface and subsurface environment
and in stochastic approaches to environmental problems, the optimal planning and operation of
water resource systems, stochastic and physical hydrology, fluid mechanics and numerical
modeling. Dr. Protopapas has been a Visiting Scholar at the Ecole Superieure de l’Energie et
des Materiaux at the University of New Orleans, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Civil
Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, and a senior engineer with the Environmental
Quality Service Group at the Massachusetts engineering firm of Metcalf & Eddy, Inc.. Dr.
Protopapas is a member of the Water Environment Association, (Metropolitan NY Chapter) Soil
Science Society of America, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Geophysical
Union, and the Technical Chamber of Greece. He has led numerous research projects as a
Principle Investigator, including a project titled, “CSO’s Abatement Technologies,” funded by
the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and “Feasibility Assessment
of an Automated Remote Monitoring and Control System for the Water Distribution Network,”
prepared for the New York City DEP and Consolidated Edison. Among his many publications,
Dr. Protopapas has co-authored a paper on, “The Command and Control System for the Water
Supply in Paris, France - a Challenge for the New York City Department of Environmental
Protection,” WEF Specialty Conference on Automating to Improve Water Quality, (1995), and
“Progress on the Theory of Fluid Flow in Geologic Media with Threshold Gradient,” Journal of
Environmental Science and Health, (1994). Education: B.S., Civil Engineering, National
Technical University of Athens, Greece; M.S., Operations Research and Computer Science,
National Technical University of Athens, Greece; M.S., Civil Engineering, MIT; Ph.D., Civil
Engineering, MIT.
Kingsley E. Haynes is University Professor and Eminent Scholar, Director of The Institute of
Public Policy and Professor of Decision Sciences, Geography and Public Affairs at George
Mason University. Dr. Haynes’ fields of specialization include resources and environmental
management policy, urban and regional economic development and planning, economic
geography and regional science, and transportation and land-use analysis. Dr. Haynes has been
an advisor, consultant or project leader with New York City’s Central Manhattan Circulation
Study, Texas Land Office, Texas Governor’s Office, and Indiana’s Departments of Commerce,
Natural Resources, Economic Development Council and the Vocational and Technical College
System. He has worked for several Federal agencies, including the Policy Research and
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Analysis Division of the National Science Foundation. Internationally, he has worked with the
Civil Aviation Authority in Brazil, the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and
Technology and its National Research Center, Jordan’s Marine Research Center, the Sudan’s
National Research Council, state governments in Australia, and Taiwan’s EPA. In addition, he
has done strategic planning for public and private organizations. Dr. Haynes was a member of
NSF’s EPSCOR program, Decision, Risk, and Management Science Panel and infrastructure
initiatives. He was Chair of the International Exchange of Scholars and is a former member of
the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Social, Economic, and
Political Science Section. He was a Governor and past President of the Western Regional
Science Association. He is currently President of the International Regional Science Association
and a member of the editorial board of six international scholarly journals. Dr. Haynes has
authored over 300 articles and professional reports published in Geographical Review,
Environment and Planning, Journal of Regional Science, and Journal of the American Planning
Association, among others. Education: B.A., History (honors), Geography, and Political
Science, Western Michigan University; M.A., Geography, Rutgers University; Ph.D., Geography
and Environmental Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University.
Arden L. Bement, Jr. (Co-Chair) is the Basil S. Turner Distinguished Professor of Engineering
and Director of the Midwest Superconductivity Consortium at Purdue University. Before his
appointment in December, 1992, he was Vice President for Science and Technology at TRW,
Inc.. He joined TRW in 1980 as Vice President for Technical Resources. Dr. Bement began his
professional career in 1954 as a research metallurgist and reactor project engineer with the
General Electric Company at the Hanford Atomic Products Operation in Richland, Washington.
He conducted research into the effects of neutron irradiation on the deformation and fracture
properties of high-purity metals, reactor fuels, and structural metals. In 1965 he joined Battelle
Memorial Institute as Manager of the Metallurgy Research Department. Three years later, he
became Manager of the Fuels and Materials Department. In 1970, Dr. Bement joined the faculty
of MIT as Professor of Nuclear Materials, and in 1976 became Director of the Materials Science
Office of the Defense Advanced Projects Agency. In 1979, he was appointed Deputy Under
Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering where he was responsible for overall
management of the science and technology programs of the Department of Defense, including
special program offices for directed-energy weapons and very-high-speed integrated circuits. In
1990, the Senate confirmed Dr. Bement as a member of the National Science Board for a term
that expired in 1994. Dr. Bement is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the
American Society for Metals International, The Metallurgical Society of AIME, and the
American Nuclear Society. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal of
the Department of Defense, and the Outstanding Achievement Award and Melville Coolbaugh
Award from the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Bement has also been inducted into the Alumni
Association Hall of Fame at the University of Idaho and the Rackham Hall of Fame at the
University of Michigan, and is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from
Cleveland State University. Education: E.Met, Colorado School of Mines; M.S., Metallurgical
Engineering, University of Idaho; Ph.D., Metallurgical Engineering, University of Michigan.
Thomas O’Rourke (Co-Chair) is Professor of Civil Engineering at Cornell University. His
teachings have covered many aspects of geotechnical engineering, including foundations, earth
retaining structures, slope stability, soil/structure interaction, underground construction,
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laboratory testing, and elements of earthquake engineering. He has developed techniques for
estimating ground movement patterns for a variety of excavation, tunneling, and mining
conditions. He has formulated methods for evaluating tunnel-boring machine performance and
for evaluating the base stability of deep braced excavations. He has developed analytical
methods and siting strategies to mitigate pipeline damage during earthquakes, analyzed and
designed high-pressure pipelines, and has established full-scale testing facilities for buried
pipelines. Dr. O’Rourke is a recipient of the C. Martin Duke Award from ASCE for his
contributions to lifeline earthquake engineering as well as other awards for his work in soil and
rock mechanics. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the ASCE,
ASME, ASTM, AAAS, ISSMEE, EERI, UTRC, and IAEG, the ASCE TCLEE Committee on
Gas and Liquid Fuel Lifelines, and a member of the NCEER Research Committee and NRC
Board on Energy and Environmental Systems. Dr. O’Rourke is also a past chairman of the
UTRC Technical Committee on Tunnel Lining Design, ASCE Earth Retaining Structures
Committee, UTRC Executive Committee, and U.S. National Committee on Tunneling
Technology. Prior to joining the faculty of Cornell, Dr. O’Rourke was a member of the
teaching and research staff at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a field
instrumentation specialist with the Washington, D.C. Metro, and represented the U.S.
Department of Transportation on a project with the British Transport and Road Research
Laboratory. In addition, Dr. O’Rourke has authored or co-authored over 200 publications on
geotechnical, underground, and earthquake engineering. Education: B.S., Civil Engineering.,
Cornell University; M.S., Civil Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Ph.D.,
Civil Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Sigurd Grava (Co-Chair) is Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University where he has
taught infrastructure, transportation, and system development courses since 1960. He is also the
Technical Director for Planning and Vice President at Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas,
Inc., an international consulting firm specializing in transportation projects. Dr. Grava has
worked in about 25 countries, primarily on projects that focus on regional transport systems and
the interaction between land use and transportation patterns. Among the projects Dr. Grava has
directed at Parsons Brinckerhoff are infrastructure plans for squatter settlements in Latin
America, river basin development studies in Africa, and the organization of decision-making
procedures for water quality control in San Antonio, Texas. He is currently managing the
“Access to the Region’s Core” project for the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan area. In the
past, he has written reports for the United Nations on transportation systems and development
policies in Manila, Katmandu, Bangkok, Lagos, Guayaquil, St. Lucia, and Bahrain. He has
written extensively on regional transport systems, the search for suitable models, the role of
busways, and informal transport systems. He is the author of Urban Planning Aspects of Water
Pollution Control, 1969, reprinted in 1972. Education: B.C.E., City College; M.S., Planning
and Housing, Columbia University; Ph.D., Transportation Planning, Columbia University.
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Roger R. Stough (Contributor) is NOVA Endowed Professor in Public Policy and Eminent
Scholar at George Mason University. He is also Associate Director of The Institute of Public
Policy, Director of the Center for Regional Analysis, Director of the Transportation Policy
Program, and a Board Member of the Northern Virginia Institute. His interests include regional
economic development, regional economic modeling, institutional barriers to technology
deployment, and environmental policy. Dr. Stough has conducted economic effects analysis of
Johns Hopkins University Institutions on the Baltimore, Maryland economy, completed
numerous applied, problem-solving, and policy analysis projects for local, state, and national
governmental agencies, and has recently explored the local and regional effects of science and
technology in the United States. His international experience includes serving as an Advisor to
the Management School at National Sun-Yat Sen University on the development of a public
policy institute, and directing and managing the delivery of an environmental training course in
Taipei, Taiwan for the Taiwan EPA and National Science Council. Dr. Stough has also been an
Advisor to the Ministry of Tourism and Economic Development in Trinidad and Tobago, the
Ministry of Tourism in St. Kitts, and the Department of Commerce in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Dr. Stough has had over 20 years experience in academia. Past academic positions have
included Chairman of the Urban, Regional Analysis and Planning Faculty at the School of Public
and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, and Founding Director of the Center for
Metropolitan Affairs and Public Policy Analysis at the College of Charleston, SC. Dr. Stough is
author of more than 100 scholarly and professional publications, 5 books or monographs, and 20
peer reviewed journal articles or chapters in books. Education: B.S., International Trade (Latin
America), The Ohio State University; M.A., Economic Geography, The University of South
Carolina; Ph.D., Geography and Environmental Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University.
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WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS
Harvey M. Bernstein is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Civil Engineering
Research Foundation (CERF), the research arm of the American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE). He is also Assistant Secretary for Research on the ASCE Board of Direction. CERF
brings together diverse groups within the civil engineering community to integrate, facilitate, and
coordinate common solutions to complex research challenges facing the civil engineering
profession. In the past, Mr. Bernstein has testified before Congress on behalf of the civil
engineering design and construction industry research community. He is the author of several
articles and co-author of the book, Solving the Innovation Puzzle: Challenges Facing the Design
and Construction Industry. Mr. Bernstein is a member of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (ASME), the American Public Works Association (APWA) and the Transportation
Research Board (TRB). Mr. Bernstein also serves on the boards of various publications and
educational institutions, including the Editorial Advisory Board of Construction Business
Review, the Publications Board of the Federal Highway Administration’s Public Roads
magazine, and the Civil and Environmental Engineering Advisory Committee to the Board of
Trustees of the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Education: B.S., Civil Engineering,
Newark College of Engineering (now New Jersey Institute of Technology); M.S., Engineering,
Princeton University; M.B.A., Loyola College.
George Bugliarello is Chancellor of Polytechnic University, where he was President from 1973
to 1994, and Chair of the Metrotech Corporation. He is an engineer and educator with a
background in civil engineering, computer languages, biomedical engineering and fluid
mechanics. He has worked abroad as a consultant for UNESCO and OECD, as a specialist for
the U.S. Department of State, and is presently the U.S. member of the Science for Stability
Steering Group of the Scientific Affairs Division of NATO. In New York, Dr. Bugliarello has
served on numerous task forces and commissions studying water conservation, infrastructure and
recycling. He is currently Chair of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment
of the National Research Council, and Chair of the National Academies Megacities Project for
the Habitat II conference. Dr. Bugliarello is also member of the National Academy of
Engineering, a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a former Chairman of the
National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee for Science and Engineering Education. An
author of numerous books and professional papers, Dr. Bugliarello was honored by the
Engineering News-Record as one of “Those Who Made Marks” in the construction industry in
recognition of the creation of Metrotech. He is also a recipient of the New York City Mayor’s
Award for Excellence in Science and Technology. Education: Sc.D., Engineering, MIT; Hon.
Doctor of Laws, Carnegie-Mellon University; Hon. Doctor of Medicine, U. of Trieste; Hon.
Doctor of Engineering, Milwaukee School of Engineering.
Nancy Rutledge Connery is an independent consultant, writer, and lecturer on a wide range of
infrastructure investment and community development issues. Her recent clients include the
World Bank, U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. Advisory Commission on
Intergovernmental Relations, and the Foundation for the New Jersey Alliance for Action. In the
past, Ms. Connery served as Director of the Public Works Project at the Washington State
Department of Community Development, and later, as Executive Director of the National
Council on Public Works Improvement, a Presidential/Congressional study commission. While
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at the Council, she published three major reports and presented frequent Congressional
testimony on the state of the nation’s infrastructure. She is currently a member of the
Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems and the Board on Infrastructure and the
Constructed Environment at the National Research Council of the National Academy of
Sciences. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Taubman Center for State and Local
Government at Harvard University. Ms. Connery has recently co-authored two articles in
Governing Magazine on infrastructure performance measurement and artist/engineer
collaborations on public works projects. She is a 1988 recipient of the Distinguished Service
Award from the American Public Works Association. Education: B.A., Pacific Lutheran
University; M.P.A., Harvard University.
Henry A. Courtright is Vice President of the Client & External Relations Group at the Electric
Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, California. The Client & External Relations
Group focuses on domestic and international relations, regulatory relations, government
relations, and delivery services. Previously, Mr. Courtright was Director of the Customer
Systems Group which delivers technologies, planning tools, and information to enhance the
value of electricity and influence patterns of demand for the benefit of both utilities and their
customers. Mr. Courtright was a member of the White House Panel on Global Climate Change
which provided the Clinton Administration with input for climate-change policy development.
He has also testified before Congress on environmental benefits of electric vehicles. Prior to
joining EPRI in 1992, Mr. Courtright was Vice President of Marketing for Buckeye Pipe Line
Company where he was responsible for strategy planning and new business development. He
has 18 years experience in the electric utility industry and was Director of Marketing and
Economic Development for Pennsylvania Power and Light Company (PP&L). He directed
PP&L’s programs in residential marketing, industrial and commercial marketing, demand-side
management, economic development and community relations. Mr. Courtright is a Registered
Professional Engineer. Education: B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Pennsylvania State
University; M.B.A., Lehigh University.
Anthony J. DiBrita is a Senior Vice President for Brooklyn Union Gas in charge of its
Engineering Construction Group. A Registered Professional Engineer in the State of New York,
Mr. DiBrita is a member of the American Gas Association and American Society of Mechanical
Engineers. He is active in a number of environmental and civic organizations. He serves as
Chairman of the Queens Botanical Garden, Chairman of the Development Committee of the
Board of Trustees of St. Joseph’s College, President of the Brooklyn Council of Boy Scouts of
America, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Brooklyn Club. Education: B.S., Civil
Engineering, Clarkson College of Technology; Advanced Management Program, Harvard
University.
Thomas W. Eagar is Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and
POSCO Professor of Materials Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His
interests involve materials processing and manufacturing, welding and joining of metals,
ceramics and electronic materials, deformation processing, alternate manufacturing processes,
manufacture management, and failure analysis. Dr. Eagar is a member of the Board of Directors
of Nashua Corporation and is Director of Metallurgical Engineering at the consulting
engineering firm of Simpson, Gumpertz and Heger. He serves on the AWS Technical Papers
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Committee and is Vice Chairman of the Research and Development Committee. Dr. Eagar is
also a member of the oversite committees for the National Institute of Standards and Technology
and the U.S. Army Research Laboratories and serves on the Technical Advisory Board of Edison
Welding Institute. He belongs to a number of professional societies, including AIME, ASM,
ASME, SAE, ASTM, SME, the American Ceramic Society and the Materials Research Society.
He is a Fellow with AWS and ASM and is the recipient of many awards, including the William
Spraragen Memorial Award (1990, 1993), and the Henry Marion Howe Medal of ASM
International (1992). Dr. Eagar has published over 150 papers and holds ten patents. Education:
B.S., Metallurgy and Materials Science, MIT; Sc.D., Metallurgy, MIT; coursework in business
administration, Lehigh University; Program for Senior Executives, Sloan School of
Management, MIT.
Eugene J. Fasullo is Industry Professor of Civil Engineering at Polytechnic University of New
York. He is a member of numerous organizations, including the New York and New Jersey
Societies of Professional Engineers, and the National Academy of Engineering. Mr. Fasullo
currently sits on the Board of Directors of The Concrete Industry Board, the New York Building
Congress, and the Society of American Military Engineers. He founded and is presently
Chairman of the Partnership for Rebuilding Our Infrastructure, an organization dedicated to
establishing the leadership roles of engineers in rebuilding America. He is also a former
Chairman of the New York Interagency Engineering Council. Mr. Fasullo began his career at
the Port Authority in 1958 working on the addition of the lower level of the George Washington
Bridge. Since then, he has held many positions, including Chief Structural Engineer of the Port
Authority, Assistant Chief Engineer of Design and Research, and Director of Engineering &
Chief Engineer. Throughout his career at the Port Authority, Mr. Fasullo was directly
responsible for designing structural systems for LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark Airports, the
Port Authority Bus Terminal, and the replacement of the upper deck of the George Washington
Bridge. In 1993 he was chosen by the Engineering News-Record as “One of 25 Who Made a
Mark” in engineering. Education: B.S., Civil Engineering, Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute;
M.S., Structural Engineering, University of Illinois.
John W. Fisher is the Joseph T. Stuart Professor of Civil Engineering at Lehigh University. He
is Director of the NSF Engineering Research Center on Advanced Technology for Large
Structural Systems (ATLSS), which strives to be a leader in scientific research and technological
developments for high-performance, durable and cost-effective structural systems for civil and
marine infrastructure. Dr. Fisher specializes in structural connections, fatigue and resistance of
riveted, bolted, and welded structures, behavior and design of composite steel-concrete
members, and the performance of steel bridges. He is a member of the National Academy of
Engineering, Honorary Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and a
Corresponding Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences. Dr. Fisher is a recipient
of several awards including the Construction-Man-of-the-Year Award from ENR (1987), the
1995 John A. Roebling Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Bridge Engineering, and the Frank
B. Brown Medal of the Franklin Institute for his work in structural engineering (1992). Dr.
Fisher is the author of Fatigue and Fracture in Steel Bridges: Case Studies (1984), and Guide to
Design Criteria for Bolted and Riveted Joints, (1974, 1987). In addition, he has published over
200 reports and articles in scientific and engineering journals. Education: B.S., Civil
Engineering, Washington University; M.S. and Ph.D., Lehigh University.
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Charles N. Herrick is a Senior Scientist with Princeton Economic Research and prior to that
was Acting Vice President and Director of the Analysis and Integration Operation at DynCorp
I&ET, an international consultancy dealing with environmental and energy management issues.
Dr. Herrick manages and conducts analyses of issues including industrial ecology, local-scale
environmental policy and sustainability studies, renewable energy life-cycle costs and benefits,
and integration of behavioral, biophysical, and biomedical science information. Prior to joining
DynCorp, Dr. Herrick served as Associate Director of the White House Council on
Environmental Quality (CEQ) and represented CEQ on the Federal Coordinating Council for
Science, Engineering, and Technology. He also Chaired the Interagency Committee on
Environmental Trends, which, like CEQ, sought to integrate across scientific issues and
disciplines to produce policy-relevant information. Previously, he was Assistant Director of the
National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP) where he managed the NAPAP 1990
Integrated Assessment. He was also a Research Assistant for the Consortium on Energy Impacts
(CEI), which provided an interdisciplinary assessment of the environmental and social impacts
associated with planned large-scale energy development in the Rocky Mountain West. Dr.
Herrick has written about the importance of integrated studies in several journals, including
Issues in Science and Technology and Global Environmental Change. Education: B.A., Fort
Lewis College; M.A., University of Colorado; Ph.D., Public Policy, American University.
Geoffrey John Dennis Hewings is a Professor at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign and Director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory at the University.
His research experience has focused on the development and application of regional and
interregional economic models for impact analysis and forecasting. He has studied the role of
analytical methods important in parameter estimation, alternative methods for decomposing
structural change, and innovative methods to compare economic structures. Applications have
been made to several midwestern economies, Chinese provinces, and several states in Brazil,
Indonesia, Korea and Europe. Dr. Hewings’ infrastructure-related projects have examined the
role of airports in local economic growth. A recent study for the city of Chicago examined
airport capacity limitations on employment levels over the next twenty years. A project in Brazil
is exploring the impact of MERCOSUL on highway capacities and a new project in Indonesia is
examining the role of infrastructure in generating regional economic growth and development.
Education: B.A., honors, University of Birmingham, England; M.A., University of Washington;
Ph.D., Economics, University of Washington.
Benjamin F. Hobbs is Visiting Professor of Geography and Environmental Engineering at The
Johns Hopkins University, where he specializes in optimization, decision analysis, simulation,
and economics and their application to power, environmental, and water systems. Prior to
joining Johns Hopkins, Dr. Hobbs was Professor of Systems, Control, and Industrial and Civil
Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. Earlier in his career he worked at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he researched power plant
siting, power markets, and water supply for power. Dr. Hobbs has been a consultant to
numerous agencies, including the Northeast Ohio Sewer District in Cleveland, Ontario Hydro in
Toronto, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He is the Area Editor in Environment and
Natural Resources for the journal, Operations Research, and an associate editor or member of
the editorial boards of several other journals. Dr. Hobbs is also Chairman of the Sessions
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Committee and member of the Strategic Planning Committee of the ASCE’s Energy Division,
and a member of three separate committees and workgroups of the IEEE Power Engineering
Society. Among Dr. Hobbs’ many publications is the forthcoming article, “Bayesian Methods
for Analyzing Climate Change and Water Resource Uncertainties” for the Journal of
Environmental Management, and “Models for Integrated Resource Planning by Electric Utilities,
Invited Review,” European Journal of Operational Research, (1995). Education: B.S., honors,
Interdisciplinary Studies, South Dakota State University; M.S., Resources Management and
Policy, State University of New York at Syracuse; Ph.D., Environmental Systems Engineering,
Cornell University.
Frannie Humplick is an Infrastructure Economist in the Environment, Infrastructure, and
Agriculture Division of the Policy Research Department at the World Bank, where she
specializes in Latin America and Asia. In her research she has studied the effects of
decentralization on infrastructure performance and valuing direct and indirect benefits of
investments in infrastructure. Prior to joining the Bank, Dr. Humplick taught at the Center for
Construction Research and Education at MIT and spent a summer teaching at the Infrastructure
Research Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. Dr. Humplick is Associate Editor of the
Journal of Infrastructure Systems and a recipient of numerous awards, including the Betram
Burger Award for Excellence in a Career in Transportation by the Boston Chapter of the Society
of Civil Engineers. She has served as a member of the Committee on Measuring and Improving
Performance Indicators of the National Research Council, the Committee on Operation, Safety,
and Maintenance of Transportation Facilities of the Transportation Research Board, and the
Committee on Performance Measures for Infrastructures and Environmental Resources at the
World Bank. Dr. Humplick is author or co-author of several papers, books, and chapters, and
contributor to the World Bank’s World Development Report in 1994 on Infrastructure
Development and Issues for Infrastructure Management in the 1990s. Education: M.Sc and
Ph.D., MIT.
Alan F. Karr is Associate Director of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) at the
Research Triangle Park, NC and a Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At NISS, Dr. Karr directs major cross-disciplinary projects which
involve transportation issues (ranging from travel demand to Intelligent Transportation Systems
to materials science of concrete), and software engineering (code decay in legacy software
systems). Prior to assuming his current positions, he was Professor of Mathematical Sciences at
The Johns Hopkins University as well as Associate Dean of its School of Engineering. Dr.
Karr’s major research interests are statistical inference for stochastic processes and stochastic
models and associated issues of inference in hydrology, structural engineering, materials science,
software engineering, and transportation. Dr. Karr is a member of Sigma Xi, the Army Science
Board, and is also a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He is the author of more
than 40 research papers and the following books: Point Processes and their Statistical Inference
(1991), Probability (1993), and Statistics and Materials Science (forthcoming). Education: B.S.,
Industrial Engineering, Northwestern University; M.S., Industrial Engineering, Northwestern
University; Ph.D., Applied Mathematics, Northwestern University.
Arthur Kressner is Department Manager for Exploratory Research, Research and Development
for Consolidated Edison of New York, Inc.. He is responsible for exploratory research and
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development involving emerging technologies for electric production, distribution, transmission,
and information systems, and efficient and beneficial applications of electricity for residential,
commercial, and industrial customers. He has been active recently in several national efforts
including the U.S. EPA Energy Star Program, the National Tuberculosis Coalition, and the
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Mr. Kressner led the team that has established the
EPRI North East Regional Community Environmental Center at Manhattan College. Previously,
he was a manager of several major fossil-fuel power plants and also managed organizations
providing engineering support and environmental, chemistry, and metallurgical analytical
laboratory services at Con Edison. Mr. Kressner has received several awards for his work in
energy efficiency and improving the environment including the 1994 Governor’s Award for
Energy Efficiency, the 1994 Edison Electric Institute Common Goals Award and several EPRI
Innovators Awards. Education: B.A., Chemical Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn;
M.S., Chemical Engineering, New York University.
T.R. Lakshmanan is Director of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S.
Department of Transportation. He has extensive experience in the development and use of
information systems and in policy analysis of transportation, economic development, energy, and
environmental issues. Prior to accepting this Presidential appointment in 1994, Dr. Lakshmanan
was founder and Executive Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, a
research and teaching center at Boston University. He was previously a Professor of Geography
and Environmental Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University, where he developed and
applied various models to assess transportation policies that have been used by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Lakshmanan has also
developed methodologies to analyze the contributions of infrastructure to economic productivity
and growth. He has been a visiting scholar at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in
the Humanities and Social Sciences, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in
Austria, Cambridge University in England, and MIT. He has also served as a consultant to the
United Nations, the World Bank and governments in Europe and Asia. Dr. Lakshmanan is the
author of ten books and over 60 articles and is the recipient of the James Anderson Medal
awarded by the Association of American Geographers. Education: B.S., honors, Physics,
University of Madras; M.A., Geography, University of Madras; Ph.D., Geography, Ohio State
University.
Lester B. Lave is James H. Higgins Professor of Economics, Graduate School of Industrial
Administration; Professor of Engineering and Public Policy, School of Engineering; and
Professor of Economics, School of Urban and Public Affairs at Carnegie Mellon University. He
is currently a co-PI on an NSF-sponsored risk-ranking research project. Dr. Lave is a member of
the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow and past President of the Society for
Risk Analysis. In the past, he has served on numerous governmental committees for the
development of policies on health and safety regulation. He has been a Senior Fellow and
Visiting Scholar at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Lave has written numerous articles on risk
assessment and regulatory policy as well as several books. He co-authored Toxic Chemicals and
the Environment (1987), authored The Strategy of Social Regulation: Decision Frameworks for
Policy (1981), edited Quantitative Risk Assessment in Regulation (1982), and co-edited The
Scientific Basis of Health and Safety Regulation (1981). Most recently he co-authored an article
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on the environmental and economic implications of electric vehicles. Education: B.A.,
Economics, Reed College; Ph.D., Economics, Harvard University.
Andrew C. Lemer is an engineer-economist and planner with more than two decades of
experience in feasibility analysis, market research, project and policy planning, technology
assessment, and environmental impact analyses related to large-scale urban and regional
development activities and civil infrastructure systems. He is the Founder (in 1985) and Chief
Executive of The MATRIX Group, Inc., where he organizes and manages large multidisciplinary professional teams performing assignments throughout the United States and the
world. Dr. Lemer served for five years as a Director of the Building Research Board of the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences, where he was responsible for establishing strategic programs in
Infrastructure Technology and Policy and Management of Building Technology. He currently
lectures on urbanization and environmental policy at The Johns Hopkins University and holds an
appointment as Visiting Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. He is the author of
numerous professional publications and articles, including Solving the Innovation Puzzle:
Challenges Facing the U.S. Design and Construction Industry (co-authored with H. Bernstein).
He is a former member of Civil Engineering Research Foundation task forces to Japan (1990)
and Europe (1993). Education: Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Loeb Fellowship,
Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Henry L. Michel is Chairman Emeritus at Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc., Director of Parsons
Brinckerhoff International, Inc., and Chairman of PB Ingenieros Consultores, S.A.. Mr.
Michel’s chief area of expertise is transportation planning, rail and rapid-transit system design
and construction management. At Parsons Brinckerhoff, he has served as Principal-in-Charge
for the direction of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) system, the
Caracas, Venezuela Metro, and the development of a new rapid-transit system for Taipei,
Taiwan. He also has domestic and international project experience on a variety of environmental
technology initiatives, ports and marine terminals, commercial airports and military airfields,
underground hardened defense installations, nuclear repositories, thermal power plants, and
water supply and wastewater treatment systems. Prior to joining Parsons Brinckerhoff in 1965,
Mr. Michel was owner and Chief Executive Officer of a European-based consulting engineering
firm. In 1996, he was honored with the Golden Beaver Award for Engineering and is also a
1994 recipient of the Engineer of the Year award by the New York Association of Consulting
Engineers. Mr. Michel is Chairman of the American Consulting Engineers Council’s
International Activities Committee, Chairman of the Civil Engineering Research Foundation
(CERF), and Vice Chairman of the Building Futures Council. He is also a registered
Professional Engineer, a Fellow with the American Society of Civil Engineers, Society of
American Military Engineers, and the Institution of Civil Engineers. He is co-author of several
books and author of numerous technical articles. Education: B.S., Civil Engineering, Columbia
University.
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Dick Netzer is Professor of Economics and Public Administration and Senior Fellow at the Taub
Urban Research Center in the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York
University. His research interests include urban economics and public finance, with special
attention to transportation economics, taxation, and financing. His research projects have
examined taxation of transportation industries on a national basis, economics of suburban rail
service in the New York area, and long-range economic and financial prospects for public
transportation in New York. Dr. Netzer is a member of the Board of Directors of the Municipal
Assistance Corporation for the City of New York and has served on many ad hoc boards and
commissions, including the New York City Commission on the Year 2000. He has been a
member or chairman of numerous technical, advisory, and editorial boards such as the Board of
Economic Advisors and the New York State Assembly Ways and Means Committee. He is also
a past editor of the quarterly, New York Affairs. During Dr. Netzer’s long career at NYU, he has
served as Chairman of the Economics Department, Dean of the Graduate School of Public
Administration, and founding Director of the Taub Urban Research Center. His books include
Financing Government in New York City, Economics of the Property Tax, The Economics of the
Public Finance (co-author), and Economics and Urban Problems. Education: B.A., Economics,
University of Wisconsin; M.A., Economics, Harvard University; M.P.A., Harvard University;
Ph.D., Economics, Harvard University.
Robert E. Paaswell is Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the Region
II University Transportation Research Center (UTRC) at City University of New York. At the
UTRC, he directs research and training programs designed to improve transportation in USDOT
Region II. He is currently managing projects for a number of regional agencies for developing
institutional tools to aid those organizations in becoming more responsive to the intermodal,
transit issues and CMAQ issues of ISTEA/CAAA. Dr. Paaswell serves on the Transit
Cooperative Research Program Board, the Institute of Transportation Engineers Transit Council
and was an advisor to the Office of Technology Assessment study on Technology and Urban
Areas. He was also a charter member of the APTA R&D committee and chaired the APTA’s
Mission Statement and Objective task force of the Transit 2000 project. In the past, he was a
Professor of Civil Engineering and Chairman of the Urban Planning Department at the State
University of New York at Buffalo where he organized and directed the Center for
Transportation Studies and Research. The Center was responsible for a number of studies,
including a project on the transportation disadvantaged and the Buffalo Light Rail System. Dr.
Paaswell also held positions as Executive Director (CEO) of the Chicago Transit Authority and
Director of the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois, where he initiated a
training program in mainland China to address surface transportation issues. He has received the
Medal for Superior Achievement from the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation
and is a registered Professional Engineer. Education: B.A., Liberal Arts, Columbia University;
B.S., Civil Engineering, Columbia University; M.S., Civil Engineering, Columbia University;
Ph.D., Civil Engineering, Rutgers University.
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Joseph C. Perkowski is Manager of the Advanced Civil Systems program within the Research
and Development Group of Bechtel. He is responsible for the effective technical and business
integration of new technological developments within the strategic plan of Bechtel Civil, Inc.,
the operating arm of Bechtel in the area of civil systems. These include application areas such as
high-speed rail, smart building systems, and innovative highway design techniques. Dr.
Perkowski joined Bechtel in March 1986. From 1982 to February 1986, he was Staff Programs
Manager with the Building Systems Company subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation
(UTC), where he worked with the Sharetech “Intelligent Building” affiliate formed by UTC and
AT&T. From October 1979 through August 1982, he held successive management positions
with the corporate office of Oxford Development Group, Ltd. of Edmonton, Alberta, including
Vice President of Engineering and Corporate Vice President of Design and Construction. Prior
to joining Oxford, he held the position of Senior Research Officer within the Corporate
Department of Environmental and Social Affairs at Petro-Canada, Calgary, Alberta. Education:
Ph.D., Environmental Systems Management, MIT.
William J. Petak is a Professor and Executive Director of the Institute of Safety and Systems
Management at the University of Southern California. Dr. Petak’s research interests involve
interdisciplinary approaches to the management of technology, with special emphasis on
reducing the risks associated with new technologies and natural hazards. He is a member of the
Adjunct Faculty of FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute, the Building Seismic Safety
Council’s Seismic Rehabilitation Advisory Committee and is Chair of the Financial Services
Sub-Committee of the City of Los Angeles, Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Seismic Hazard
Reduction. He is a past member of the following National Research Council committees: the
U.S. Committee for the Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction, the Committee on Natural
Disasters, the Committee on Ground Failure Hazards Research, and the Committee on the
Socioeconomic Aspects of Earthquake Prediction. He is the author of many papers on
earthquake hazard mitigation and public policy, and is co-author of three books: Natural Risk
Assessment and Public Policy (1982), Politics and Economics of Earthquake Hazard Mitigation
(1986), and Disabled Persons and Earthquake Hazards (1988). Education: B.S., Engineering,
University of Pittsburgh; M.B.A., Public Administration, University of Southern California;
Ph.D., Public Administration, University of Southern California.
Henry L. Peyrebrune is an independent transportation consultant currently serving as an
advisor to the Minister of Communications in Saudi Arabia and the Albany County Government.
He is also a member of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Civil Engineering Department
Advisory Board. For 33 years, Mr. Peyrebrune worked at the New York State Department of
Transportation in a variety of positions, including Assistant Commissioner for Public
Transportation and First Deputy Commissioner. As Assistant Commissioner, he was
responsible for aviation, public transit, commercial transportation, including the regulation of
private carriers, the Public Transportation Safety Board and policy development. As First
Deputy Commissioner, Mr. Peyrebrune provided direction to the Office of Public
Transportation, the Office of Management and Finance, and the Office of Human Resources.
Previously, he worked as a Transportation Analyst with the NYS Department of Public Works
and a Program Associate in the areas of environment, recreation, and transportation for former
New York Governor Carey. He is a registered Professional Engineer in New York State and has
served on numerous national and international professional committees. Education: B.S., Civil
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Engineering, Purdue University; graduate studies at Yale University; Ph.D. work at University of
Minnesota.
Karen R. Polenske is Professor of Regional Political Economy and Planning in the Department
of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and directs the multiregional planning research staff in
that department. She teaches classes on regional development and planning theories and models,
infrastructure, and transitions in property rights. Dr. Polenske’s contributions to the field of
regional and national accounting include the development and estimation of a comprehensive set
of multiregional input-output (MRIO) accounts for the United States, and the construction and
implementation of the MRIO model that can be used to predict regional outputs and interregional
freight shipments simultaneously. She has also applied the MRIO and other regional models to
employment, energy, environmental, and transportation issues in the United States and China.
Currently, Dr. Polenske is developing a property-rights framework for economic development
strategies. Prior to joining MIT in 1972, Dr. Polenske taught and conducted research at the
Department of Economics at Harvard University. Education: B.A., Home Economics, Oregon
State College; M.A., Public Administration and Economics, Syracuse University; and Ph.D.,
Economics, Harvard University.
John Ramage is Senior Vice President of CH2M Hill where he is managing a remediation team
in the initial planning and implementation for the environmental remediation of the 3,800 acre
petroleum refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. Previously, Mr. Ramage served as Director of the
Milwaukee Water Pollution Abatement Program (MWPAP), where he managed all phases of the
$2.3 billion program. The MWPAP includes $670 million in upgrades and improvements to the
Jones Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, $200 million in upgrades to the South Shore
Wastewater Treatment Plant, a $680 million interceptor and relief sewer program with 19 miles
of 17- to 32-foot diameter rock tunnel up to 350 feet below ground surface, and a $330 million
combined sewer overflow abatement program. Mr. Ramage is registered as a professional
engineer in Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin. He is a Fellow of the American Society of
Civil Engineers, and a member of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation
Engineering, the Underground Technology Research Council, and the Cornell University School
of Civil and Environmental Engineering Advisory Council. He has also served on numerous
committees of the Association of Engineering Firms Practicing in the Geosciences, and the
National Research Council, where he is presently on the Committee for an Infrastructure
Technology Research Agenda. Education: B.S. with distinction, Civil Engineering, Washington
State University; M.S., Civil Engineering, (University Fellow), University of Illinois.
Charles ReVelle is Founder of and Professor in the Program in Systems Analysis and
Economics for Public Decision Making at The Johns Hopkins University. Established in 1974,
the program’s mission is research and education in the field of quantitative policy analysis as
especially applied to environmental and urban/regional decision-making. Dr. ReVelle’s areas of
research and teaching include: the design of location systems for fire stations and fire equipment,
for ambulance deployment, power plants, and wastewater and manufacturing plants; the
modeling of water quality systems both from a descriptive and management perspective; the
management of water resources as embodied in reservoir design and operation policy; arms
control strategy deployment (before the end of the Cold War); and natural area planning and
forestry management science. Although these are the principle areas in which he has worked,
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Dr. ReVelle also has published papers on population modeling, epidemic management, costsharing, traffic intersection design, and solar energy systems for homes, among others. His
papers have appeared in Water Resources Research, Water Resources Bulletin, Demography,
Journal of Regional Science, Transportation Research, and other journals as well. He is
associate editor of Management Science and a member of the Editorial Board of four other
journals. With his wife, Penelope, he has written three textbooks: Sourcebook on the
Environment, Houghton Miffin, 1974; The Environment: Issues and Choices for Society, Jones
and Bartlett, 3rd ed., 1987; and The Global Environment: Securing a Sustainable Future, Jones
and Bartlett, 1992. Education: B.Ch.E., Cornell University; Ph.D., Environmental Systems
Engineering, Cornell University.
James E. Roberts is Director of the Engineering Service Center and Chief Structures Engineer
for the California Department of Transportation. A 43-year veteran of the Department, Mr.
Roberts has a comprehensive background in planning, budgeting, design, construction,
administration, equipment acquisition, major project management and large statewide program
management. He has been the Principal-in-Charge of the $3.5 Billion Bridge Seismic Retrofit
Strengthening Program and has implemented a comprehensive “problem focused” research
program in support of seismic design and retrofit for California’s 12,000 bridges. He is a
member of several organizations, including ACI, ASCE, the National Academy of Engineers,
and SEAOC. He currently chairs three technical committees of the AASHTO Sub-Committee
for Bridges and Structures. In addition, he chaired the AASHTO-AGC-ARTBA Task Force 32
which produced the “Manual for Corrosion Protection of Concrete Bridges,” published in 1993.
Mr. Roberts has conducted research on bridge technology and has published several technical
papers on bridge design and maintenance (especially seismic design and retrofit). In addition, he
is a retired Colonel with the U.S. Army, having spent thirty-three years as a Reserve Officer and
two years on active duty with the Army Corps of Engineers in Korea. Education: B.S., Civil
Engineering, University of California, Berkeley; M.S., Structural Engineering, University of
Southern California.
Della M. Roy is Professor of Materials Science, Emerita, at the Materials Research Laboratory
and Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. She is
Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Cement and Concrete Research, and was the first to
make ultrahigh strength cement, leading to a new family of products within the family of
chemically bonded ceramics. Her research interests include chemically bonded ceramics,
concrete microstructure, chemistry of calcium silicates, hydrothermal and high temperature
reactions, cement hydration, surface chemistry, high pressure reactions, geochemistry reactions,
and very high strength low porosity cement composites and concrete. Dr. Roy is a member of
the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America,
AAAS, American Ceramic Society and American Concrete Institute. She serves on numerous
committees, including the Board of Trustees at the American Ceramic Society, the Executive
Committee of the Transportation Research Board, the National Academy of Sciences Panel for
the Center for Building Technology, and the Council of the Materials Research Society. She is a
recipient of the John Jeppson Medal and the Copeland Award of the American Ceramic Society
for her contributions in the area of the chemistry of cements. Dr. Roy is also the author of more
than 360 research papers and editor of eight books. Education: B.S. Magna Cum Laude,
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Chemistry, University of Oregon; M.S. and Ph.D., Mineralogy and Geochemistry, Pennsylvania
State University.
Robert M. Schwab is Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland where he has also
served as Department of Economics Director of Graduate Studies since 1991. Between 19871988 he was a Gilbert White Fellow at Resources for the Future, and before joining the faculty at
the University of Maryland, Dr. Schwab worked as a planner for five years. His primary field of
research is public economics with a particular emphasis on state and local government. Some of
his recent research focuses on the link between infrastructure investment and regional economic
growth. His other current primary research interests include education finance reform, the
distribution of education resources, and the relative efficiency of public and Catholic schools.
He has done recent work on land taxation, tax amnesties, life-cycle tax incidence, and teenage
pregnancy. Education: M.A., City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina; Ph.D.,
Economics, The Johns Hopkins University.
Luis Suarez-Villa is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of California
(Irvine). He is a specialist in regional economic development, regional science, and urban
planning. He is interested in exploring the relationship between economic development and the
human capital and communications infrastructures. His recent research has explored the
relationship between infrastructural investment and technological innovation with long-range
series data. Dr. Suarez-Villa has also had extensive international experience, researching aspects
of regional and local development, industrial location, and technological change in Spain,
Sweden, Austria, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. He is the author or coauthor of 64 publications in his areas of expertise, including the forthcoming chapter,
“Innovative Capacity, Infrastructure, and Regional Policy,” appearing in Infrastructure,
Economic Growth and Regional Development (David Batten and Charles Karlsson, eds.). Dr.
Suarez-Villa is a member of the Regional Science Association International, the Western
Regional Science Association, the American Economic Association, the Association of
American Geographers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Education: B.Arch., Design and Architectural Engineering, University of Florida; M.A.Arch.,
Urban Design and History, University of Florida; M.R.P., Planning, Cornell University; Ph.D.,
Planning, Economics, Latin American Studies, Cornell University.
Joel A. Tarr is Richard S. Caliguiri Professor of Urban and Environmental History and Policy at
Carnegie Mellon University. He is presently studying industrial and municipal pollution and
changing urban energy systems. Dr. Tarr has been the recipient of fellowships and grants from
the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Park Service, and the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation. He has served on the National Research Council and the Office of Technology
Assessment committees concerned with problems of the urban infrastructure and technology. He
is the recipient of CMU’s 1992 Robert Doherty Prize for contributions to excellence in education
and the 1988 Abel Wolman Prize of the Public Works Historical Society. He has written
extensively on the history and impacts of technological systems, primarily in the area of
environmental infrastructure and water supply. His two latest works are The Search for the
Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (forthcoming), and “Economic Impact
of Rail Transport in Western Pennsylvania, 1950-1990,” (with D. Hounshell and M. Samber,
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1995). Dr. Tarr has also had articles appear in numerous journals, including Agricultural
History, American Journal of Public Health, Environmental History Review, Journal of
Infrastructure Systems (ASCE), Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, and the
Journal of Urban History. Education: Ph.D., Northwestern University.
Martin Wachs is Director of the University of California Transportation Center and Professor
of City and Regional Planning and Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of California,
Berkeley. Prior to Berkeley, Dr. Wachs was a Professor of Urban Planning and Director of the
Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA. He is an active member of the Transportation
Research Board, and recently chaired a committee that studied congestion pricing policy.
Recently, he served as Special Master to the United States District Court in San Francisco,
providing technical advice in a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. He
is an active member of the American Planning Association and the American Institute of
Certified Planners, sits on several editorial boards of planning journals, and is former Associate
Editor of the international journal, Transportation. Dr. Wachs has also been a consultant to a
number of private companies and public agencies and is the author of four books and ninety
articles on transportation planning. Recently, his writings have dealt with the relationship
between transportation, air quality and land use. In 1986 he received an award for being a
“Distinguished Planning Educator” from the California Planning Association, and is the recipient
of a Distinguished Teaching Award from the UCLA Alumni Association. Education: B.S.,
Civil Engineering, City University of New York; M.S. and Ph.D., Transportation Planning,
Northwestern University.
Gene E. Willeke is Director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Professor of
Geography at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Prior to joining the faculty at Miami
University, Dr. Willeke taught at Stanford University and The Georgia Institute of Technology.
Dr. Willeke’s areas of interest include public works planning, especially transportation and water
resources, geographic information systems, hydrology, local government land-use planning and
construction, environmental planning and analysis, and social impact assessment. He is
currently a member of the Fernald Citizens Task Force, Ohio EPA Director’s Advisory Council,
and the Butler County Land Use Coordinating Committee. He has been a consultant to the U.S.
EPA, U.S. Department of Transportation, Atlanta Regional Commission, U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, among others. Dr. Willeke’s federal expertise also includes the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers’ Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors, U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, U.S. Public
Health Service, and the Institute for Water Resources, Corps of Engineers. He is co-author of
The House That Jack Built, an agenda for the assessment of the technologies for the Built
Environment for the National Science Foundation. At present, he is completing work on a
drought atlas of the United States. Education: A.B., Mathematics, Ohio Northern University;
B.S., Civil Engineering, Ohio Northern University; M.S.C.E., Water Resources Management,
Stanford University; Ph.D., Engineering-Economic Planning, Stanford University.
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Jeff R. Wright is Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University and Director of the
Indiana Water Resources Research Center. His area of expertise is the application of systems
analysis and operations research to public-sector engineering management problems, and the
design and development of computer-based support systems. He specializes in the areas of
multiobjective optimization and heuristic algorithm design, and is particularly interested in
spatial and geometric optimization. Dr. Wright is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of
Infrastructure Systems of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He is author or co-author of
over 150 scholarly papers and research reports. Education: B.A., Social Psychology, University
of Washington; B.S.E. and M.S.C.E., University of Washington; Ph.D., John Hopkins
University.
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