Infrastructure for the future

Infrastructure consists of structures, systems and facilities that serve a city’s economy and functions. It is typically a term to characterize ‘technical structures’ such as roads, bridges, tunnels, or other constructed facilities such as loading docks, cold storage chambers, electrical capacity, fuel tanks, cranes, overhead clearances or components of water supplies, sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications. Infrastructure can also be defined as “the physical components of interrelated systems providing commodities and services essential to enable, sustain, or enhance societal living conditions.”

Infrastructure is necessary for:

• Conveying energy to power the city’s numerous systems from lighting the streets and running air-conditioning in buildings to complex IT systems and essential equipment for the city’s wellbeing
• Moving people and goods across and beyond the city using road and rail transport and connecting neighbourhoods and communities
• Supplying clean water to households and commercial premises and in return taking away waste water (like sewage) for safe disposal
• Collecting and disposing of solid waste from domestic and industrial sources through landfill or thermal treatment
• Connecting cities with each other through airports, ports, rail and roads, as well as through telecommunications and internet means.

Growing Needs

With growing urbanization, the need for infrastructure is increasing. According to UN Habitat, the world’s cities occupy just 3% of the Earth’s land, but account for 60-80% of energy consumption and 75% of carbon emissions. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development comprises a set of seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030. Of particular importance is Goal 11 – Industry, Infrastructure and Innovation – which seeks to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”

Targets include:

• Access to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services
• Access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all • Reducing the number of deaths and the number of people affected and substantially decrease the direct economic losses relative to global gross domestic product caused by disasters
• Reducing the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management
• Providing universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities

All of this is made possible by infrastructure. In Asia, according to PwC consultants, it is estimated that the amount of infrastructure to be installed amounts to about US$8 trillion up to 2020 to meet growth requirements of the respective countries in the Asia Pacific region. The infrastructure deficit for Asia (excluding Australia, New Zealand and Pacific countries in North and South America) is most acute in public infrastructure. The highest lies in power (US$4.1 trillion) followed by roads (US$2.3 trillion) and telecommunications (US$1.1 trillion).

Keeping Up With Moore’s Law

We live in an evolving world of technological change. Moore’s Law is a computing term which originated around 1970; the simplified version of this law states that processor speeds, or overall processing power for computers will double every two years. With this in mind, it is no surprise that the combination of computing power and infrastructure has transformed cities into much ‘smarter’ versions.

Some experts believe that the notion of smart cities has been overly driven by IT companies. There are a number of reasons for this:

• The enthusiasm of IT companies to identify solutions that their own hardware and software can offer
• Practitioners (architects, planners and especially engineers) failing to engage properly in the debate. Engineers are singled out here as the profession that historically has held the role of harnessing emergent science and technology to improve the environment
• A lack of understanding at the municipal leadership level

Ideally there should be a single, ‘smart’, shared control system enabling more informed decision-making and more rapid deployment of measures to deal with emerging situations. There is a need for ‘middleware’ which sits between the city infrastructure ‘hardware’ and the operational ‘software’ controls and (in the future) City Apps. The problems associated with the integration of individual functionally-focused systems are the lack of common interfaces and operating systems and the ability to cope with the vast amount of data generated. It is clear that open IT architecture with standard interface protocols and the ability to plug ‘n’ play new applications and hardware will make it much easier to link systems as well as opening the market to new entrants with valuable fresh thinking.