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Natural infrastructure is a class of hard infrastructure that provides goods and
services to people without any need for investment or management. Rivers are an
excellent example of natural infrastructure that provide all kinds of water, water
quality, waste management, and transportation services to people.
Grey infrastructure is a class of hard infrastructure that uses primarily artificial,
engineered, and nonbiological materials and systems. Roads, pipes, power lines,
and sewers are good examples of grey infrastructure.
The capital expense of infrastructure, in combination with the difficulty to
exclude people from using infrastructure once it is built, naturally lends itself to
socialized, heavily regulated ownership and governance structures. Typically, hard
infrastructure systems are owned and managed by soft infrastructure systems, such
as government agencies or large publicly regulated private enterprises. Infrastructures
are often multipurpose and public-use, or are publicly owned with fee-based uses,
such as with water systems, airports, seaports, and roads and bridges.
As was noted in our discussion of criteria in Chapter 1, FEW goods and services
are among the lifelines of cities and of civilization, so they need to be extremely
affordable and reliable for all people (Criterion 1 and 4, see Sect. 1.3.1). FEW infrastructures are therefore by definition critical infrastructures (Criterion 2), whether
or not they are officially “protected” by the government (Chap. 14).
Lock-in is a key property of both hard and soft infrastructure. Once infrastructure
is built, human civilization tends to incrementally build around it and lock-in to
specific configurations that are prohibitively expensive to reverse because the economy, ecology, and society have become heavily dependent on the infrastructure.
Locked-in infrastructure is inflexible and unadaptable. For example, most cities
have evolved around major rivers and at natural cross-roads, because the natural
infrastructure of rivers has historically provided nearly cost-free waterborne transportation, sanitation, and water supply. FEW infrastructures are a geographical
foundation for human cities and civilization. If the river dries up, will you replace
the river or move the city? Either option is staggeringly expensive and fraught with
political, social, economic, and environmental considerations. Lock-in is not
entirely negative. Societies and especially business decisions require some degree
of certainty and commitment in order to invest with confidence. Infrastructure lockin ensures some level of commitment about the future, and facilitates long term
investment as a result.
Interdependency is an infrastructure property wherein each type of infrastructure is heavily dependent on one or several other infrastructures. Each interdependency creates vulnerability to cascading failures, where failure in one infrastructure
causes failures in other infrastructures. For example, most layers of the modern
FEW system are dependent on the electrical power grid, and even brief disruptions
to electricity supply will disable water systems, financial and transaction systems,
governance systems, transportation systems, and food distribution systems.
Interdependency also means that the location of one infrastructure depends on
another. For instance, steel mills depend on huge quantities of ore and electrical
power, and are therefore located near ports, coast lines, and large (often nuclear)
power plants. Railroads need to link to ports and cities, as well as to power plants,
B. L. Ruddell et al.
Natural infrastructure is a class of hard infrastructure that provides goods and
services to people without any need for investment or management. Rivers are an
excellent example of natural infrastructure that provide all kinds of water, water
quality, waste management, and transportation services to people.
Grey infrastructure is a class of hard infrastructure that uses primarily artificial,
engineered, and nonbiological materials and systems. Roads, pipes, power lines,
and sewers are good examples of grey infrastructure.
The capital expense of infrastructure, in combination with the difficulty to
exclude people from using infrastructure once it is built, naturally lends itself to
socialized, heavily regulated ownership and governance structures. Typically, hard
infrastructure systems are owned and managed by soft infrastructure systems, such
as government agencies or large publicly regulated private enterprises. Infrastructures
are often multipurpose and public-use, or are publicly owned with fee-based uses,
such as with water systems, airports, seaports, and roads and bridges.
As was noted in our discussion of criteria in Chapter 1, FEW goods and services
are among the lifelines of cities and of civilization, so they need to be extremely
affordable and reliable for all people (Criterion 1 and 4, see Sect. 1.3.1). FEW infrastructures are therefore by definition critical infrastructures (Criterion 2), whether
or not they are officially “protected” by the government (Chap. 14).
Lock-in is a key property of both hard and soft infrastructure. Once infrastructure
is built, human civilization tends to incrementally build around it and lock-in to
specific configurations that are prohibitively expensive to reverse because the economy, ecology, and society have become heavily dependent on the infrastructure.
Locked-in infrastructure is inflexible and unadaptable. For example, most cities
have evolved around major rivers and at natural cross-roads, because the natural
infrastructure of rivers has historically provided nearly cost-free waterborne transportation, sanitation, and water supply. FEW infrastructures are a geographical
foundation for human cities and civilization. If the river dries up, will you replace
the river or move the city? Either option is staggeringly expensive and fraught with
political, social, economic, and environmental considerations. Lock-in is not
entirely negative. Societies and especially business decisions require some degree
of certainty and commitment in order to invest with confidence. Infrastructure lockin ensures some level of commitment about the future, and facilitates long term
investment as a result.
Interdependency is an infrastructure property wherein each type of infrastructure is heavily dependent on one or several other infrastructures. Each interdependency creates vulnerability to cascading failures, where failure in one infrastructure
causes failures in other infrastructures. For example, most layers of the modern
FEW system are dependent on the electrical power grid, and even brief disruptions
to electricity supply will disable water systems, financial and transaction systems,
governance systems, transportation systems, and food distribution systems.
Interdependency also means that the location of one infrastructure depends on
another. For instance, steel mills depend on huge quantities of ore and electrical
power, and are therefore located near ports, coast lines, and large (often nuclear)
power plants. Railroads need to link to ports and cities, as well as to power plants,
B. L. Ruddell et al.