Preface
Why infrastructure? Five decades ago, many countries that were on the way to or
were getting their independence suddenly discovered to their amazement that many
facilities were missing, first and foremost, water, roads and probably electrical
energy were topping the list. In fact, for quite a long time such facilities described
the basic infrastructure requirements of these countries. Later, when the author was
leaving college for higher studies abroad and asked why he wanted to study civil
engineering, he replied: “to help in building the infrastructure of the country”,
because he had seen the phrase somewhere in a newspaper and had read a book on
civil engineering which described the construction of roads and bridges as pertaining
to this field. To cut a long story short, the author started working in the water industry
with the sole water distributor, alongside consultants, contractors, and funding
agencies who were eager to lend money to the country for its projects. This
15-year work experience gave the author ample opportunity to reflect on water as
being an essential infrastructure service, while the meetings with representatives of
funding agencies and engineers from other disciplines helped bringing home that
there was much more to infrastructure and that many of the problems encountered
were similar.
For several reasons, the author left the industry to spend more than two decades in
academia, where he was able to carry out some research on the subject of infrastructure and discuss and teach some of its topics to students. One lesson learnt, among
others, was: thinking differently is not necessarily difficult, but getting the conclusions across to convince others, particularly engineering colleagues – thinking more
of their clients’ resistance to change, rather than the correct or appropriate approach –
is certainly less easy.
This said, the subject matter of this book started, as explained, with classroom
notes, discussions and examples about the environment, never ending road congestion, town layouts, drain design, cyclonic conditions, flood experiences, living
without electricity for 6 weeks, etc.
The book is divided into 22 chapters, as shown in Fig. 1. Examples provided in
the book use currencies such as dollars, euros and rupees, just to use a monetary unit.
ix
Why infrastructure? Five decades ago, many countries that were on the way to or
were getting their independence suddenly discovered to their amazement that many
facilities were missing, first and foremost, water, roads and probably electrical
energy were topping the list. In fact, for quite a long time such facilities described
the basic infrastructure requirements of these countries. Later, when the author was
leaving college for higher studies abroad and asked why he wanted to study civil
engineering, he replied: “to help in building the infrastructure of the country”,
because he had seen the phrase somewhere in a newspaper and had read a book on
civil engineering which described the construction of roads and bridges as pertaining
to this field. To cut a long story short, the author started working in the water industry
with the sole water distributor, alongside consultants, contractors, and funding
agencies who were eager to lend money to the country for its projects. This
15-year work experience gave the author ample opportunity to reflect on water as
being an essential infrastructure service, while the meetings with representatives of
funding agencies and engineers from other disciplines helped bringing home that
there was much more to infrastructure and that many of the problems encountered
were similar.
For several reasons, the author left the industry to spend more than two decades in
academia, where he was able to carry out some research on the subject of infrastructure and discuss and teach some of its topics to students. One lesson learnt, among
others, was: thinking differently is not necessarily difficult, but getting the conclusions across to convince others, particularly engineering colleagues – thinking more
of their clients’ resistance to change, rather than the correct or appropriate approach –
is certainly less easy.
This said, the subject matter of this book started, as explained, with classroom
notes, discussions and examples about the environment, never ending road congestion, town layouts, drain design, cyclonic conditions, flood experiences, living
without electricity for 6 weeks, etc.
The book is divided into 22 chapters, as shown in Fig. 1. Examples provided in
the book use currencies such as dollars, euros and rupees, just to use a monetary unit.
ix