265
Decoupling is a strategy to reduce infrastructure vulnerability to cascading failures by buffering or reducing the interdependency property. For instance, backup
generators and islanding are tactics to remove vulnerability to power grid failure by
selectively decoupling a facility or community from the power grid. However,
decoupling reduces efficiencies and erodes the effectiveness of the infrastructure.
Anticipatory Adaptation is a resilience strategy that involves monitoring and
anticipating changes that will affect the infrastructure, followed by an attempt to
change the infrastructure in time to compensate for the changes. This is a sound
strategy, but in the case of large FEW infrastructures we may not be able to see far
enough into the future, with sufficient accuracy and lead time, in order to make the
necessary changes.
Robustness is a strategy that chooses infrastructures that perform well under a
very wide range of possible futures, reducing the need to precisely predict the
future. Robust investments are low-risk investments, but they may come at the cost
of some cost and efficiency in the short term. Robustness can be engineered into
infrastructure, but has historically been ignored in favor of efficiency; this has
proven to be a mistake.
Insurance, and especially reinsurance, attempts to price-in the cost of change
and uncertainty about the future to investment decisions. Insurance is an efficient
mechanism for pooling risk, but it fails to handle systematic risks that affect almost
everyone or that impact very large scales. This is a problem for infrastructure insurance, because infrastructure tends to focus on the systematic and the large scale.
Unfortunately, the current infrastructure in the USA is a continued dire need of
overhaul. On March of 2017, ASCE released its Infrastructure Report Card with
D+, reflecting the significant backlog of needs facing the USA’s infrastructure writ
large. Aging and underperforming FEW infrastructures become a drag on the
national economy, especially for aging hydraulic infrastructures (dams, levees) and
transportation system (aviation, roads, bridge, rail, transit, ports, and inland waterways). The infrastructure here is functional, but in many cases outdated, inefficient,
under-sized, and beginning to fail. This should be viewed as an opportunity to adapt
to the future—and it is an opportunity we cannot afford to waste.
10.2 Infrastructure Supply Chains Form a Multilayer
Network
Coupled infrastructures and supply chains form a network—a very complicated
network with many nodes (i.e., producers, consumers, storage), many layers (i.e.,
multitype or multiplex), representing multiple modes of transportation (i.e., pipe,
road, rail, ship, water, wire), with many different FEW commodities sharing that
network. These are Process Networks, not simple networks (see Sect. 2.2). In order
to manage these coupled infrastructure systems, we need to understand the spatial
structure of the network, in addition to the process details of each infrastructure
10 Infrastructure
Decoupling is a strategy to reduce infrastructure vulnerability to cascading failures by buffering or reducing the interdependency property. For instance, backup
generators and islanding are tactics to remove vulnerability to power grid failure by
selectively decoupling a facility or community from the power grid. However,
decoupling reduces efficiencies and erodes the effectiveness of the infrastructure.
Anticipatory Adaptation is a resilience strategy that involves monitoring and
anticipating changes that will affect the infrastructure, followed by an attempt to
change the infrastructure in time to compensate for the changes. This is a sound
strategy, but in the case of large FEW infrastructures we may not be able to see far
enough into the future, with sufficient accuracy and lead time, in order to make the
necessary changes.
Robustness is a strategy that chooses infrastructures that perform well under a
very wide range of possible futures, reducing the need to precisely predict the
future. Robust investments are low-risk investments, but they may come at the cost
of some cost and efficiency in the short term. Robustness can be engineered into
infrastructure, but has historically been ignored in favor of efficiency; this has
proven to be a mistake.
Insurance, and especially reinsurance, attempts to price-in the cost of change
and uncertainty about the future to investment decisions. Insurance is an efficient
mechanism for pooling risk, but it fails to handle systematic risks that affect almost
everyone or that impact very large scales. This is a problem for infrastructure insurance, because infrastructure tends to focus on the systematic and the large scale.
Unfortunately, the current infrastructure in the USA is a continued dire need of
overhaul. On March of 2017, ASCE released its Infrastructure Report Card with
D+, reflecting the significant backlog of needs facing the USA’s infrastructure writ
large. Aging and underperforming FEW infrastructures become a drag on the
national economy, especially for aging hydraulic infrastructures (dams, levees) and
transportation system (aviation, roads, bridge, rail, transit, ports, and inland waterways). The infrastructure here is functional, but in many cases outdated, inefficient,
under-sized, and beginning to fail. This should be viewed as an opportunity to adapt
to the future—and it is an opportunity we cannot afford to waste.
10.2 Infrastructure Supply Chains Form a Multilayer
Network
Coupled infrastructures and supply chains form a network—a very complicated
network with many nodes (i.e., producers, consumers, storage), many layers (i.e.,
multitype or multiplex), representing multiple modes of transportation (i.e., pipe,
road, rail, ship, water, wire), with many different FEW commodities sharing that
network. These are Process Networks, not simple networks (see Sect. 2.2). In order
to manage these coupled infrastructure systems, we need to understand the spatial
structure of the network, in addition to the process details of each infrastructure
10 Infrastructure