259
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
P. Saundry, B. L. Ruddell (eds.), The Food-Energy-Water Nexus, AESS
Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies and Sciences Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29914-9_10
Chapter 10
Infrastructure
Benjamin L. Ruddell, Hongkai Gao, Okan Pala, Richard Rushforth,
and John Sabo
10.1 Introduction: What Is Infrastructure?
Infrastructures handle high-volume goods and services that require heavily capitalized, large-scale, durable, reliable, shared, interdependent, and specialized systems.
Infrastructure facilitates social, economic, and environmental functions by achieving a high degree of efficiency at a low marginal cost to produce, transport, distribute, quality-control, and allocate high-volume goods and services. Infrastructure
development usually requires large, long-term investments and substantial consideration of risk, change, and vulnerability to extreme events during the design
phase. Water and wastewater service provision, stormwater management, bulk
freight transport, bulk storage of food, energy, and water, waste management, distribution warehouses, internet address registries, fiber optic lines and switches, electrical power service, heavy manufacturing, roads, law enforcement and security,
education, financial services and regulations, property rights, health services, and
government are examples of goods and services that tend to be
infrastructure-heavy.
B. L. Ruddell (*) · R. Rushforth
School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, Northern Arizona University,
Flagstaff, AZ, USA
e-mail: Benjamin.Ruddell@nau.edu; Richard.Rushforth@nau.edu
H. Gao · J. Sabo
Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University,
Tempe, AZ, USA
e-mail: hongkai.gao@asu.edu; John.L.Sabo@asu.edu
O. Pala
Center for Geospatial Analytics, College of Natural Resourses, North Carolina State
University, Raleigh, NC, USA
e-mail: opala@ncsu.edu
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
P. Saundry, B. L. Ruddell (eds.), The Food-Energy-Water Nexus, AESS
Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies and Sciences Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29914-9_10
Chapter 10
Infrastructure
Benjamin L. Ruddell, Hongkai Gao, Okan Pala, Richard Rushforth,
and John Sabo
10.1 Introduction: What Is Infrastructure?
Infrastructures handle high-volume goods and services that require heavily capitalized, large-scale, durable, reliable, shared, interdependent, and specialized systems.
Infrastructure facilitates social, economic, and environmental functions by achieving a high degree of efficiency at a low marginal cost to produce, transport, distribute, quality-control, and allocate high-volume goods and services. Infrastructure
development usually requires large, long-term investments and substantial consideration of risk, change, and vulnerability to extreme events during the design
phase. Water and wastewater service provision, stormwater management, bulk
freight transport, bulk storage of food, energy, and water, waste management, distribution warehouses, internet address registries, fiber optic lines and switches, electrical power service, heavy manufacturing, roads, law enforcement and security,
education, financial services and regulations, property rights, health services, and
government are examples of goods and services that tend to be
infrastructure-heavy.
B. L. Ruddell (*) · R. Rushforth
School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, Northern Arizona University,
Flagstaff, AZ, USA
e-mail: Benjamin.Ruddell@nau.edu; Richard.Rushforth@nau.edu
H. Gao · J. Sabo
Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University,
Tempe, AZ, USA
e-mail: hongkai.gao@asu.edu; John.L.Sabo@asu.edu
O. Pala
Center for Geospatial Analytics, College of Natural Resourses, North Carolina State
University, Raleigh, NC, USA
e-mail: opala@ncsu.edu