An official website of the United States government
Abstract Traditional infrastructure adaptation to extreme weather events (and now climate change) has typically been techno‐centric and heavily grounded in robustness—the capacity to prevent or minimize disruptions via a risk‐based approach that emphasizes control, armoring, and strengthening (e.g., raising the height of levees). However, climate and nonclimate challenges facing infrastructure are not purely technological. Ecological and social systems also warrant consideration to manage issues of overconfidence, inflexibility, interdependence, and resource utilization—among others. As a result, techno‐centric adaptation strategies can result in unwanted tradeoffs, unintended consequences, and underaddressed vulnerabilities. Techno‐centric strategies thatlock‐intoday's infrastructure systems to vulnerable future design, management, and regulatory practices may be particularly problematic by exacerbating these ecological and social issues rather than ameliorating them. Given these challenges, we develop a conceptual model and infrastructure adaptation case studies to argue the following: (1) infrastructure systems are not simply technological and should be understood as complex and interconnected social, ecological, and technological systems (SETSs); (2) infrastructure challenges, like lock‐in, stem from SETS interactions that are often overlooked and underappreciated; (3) framing infrastructure with aSETS lenscan help identify and prevent maladaptive issues like lock‐in; and (4) a SETS lens can also highlight effective infrastructure adaptation strategies that may not traditionally be considered. Ultimately, we find that treating infrastructure as SETS shows promise for increasing the adaptive capacity of infrastructure systems by highlighting how lock‐in and vulnerabilities evolve and how multidisciplinary strategies can be deployed to address these challenges by broadening the options for adaptation.
more »
« less
Lock-in: origination and significance within infrastructure systems
Abstract Infrastructure systems have legacies that continue to define their priorities, goals, flexibility, and ability to make sense of their environments. These legacies may or may not align with future needs, but regardless of alignment, they may restrict viable pathways forward. Infrastructure ‘lock-in’ has not been sufficiently confronted in infrastructure systems. Lock-in can loosely be interpreted as internal and external pressures that constrain a system, and it encourages self-reinforcing feedback where the system becomes resistant to change. By acknowledging and recognizing that lock-in exists at small and large scales, perpetuated by individuals, organizations, and institutions, infrastructure managers can critically reflect upon biases, assumptions, and decision-making approaches. This article describes six distinct domains of lock-in: technological, social, economic, individual, institutional, and epistemic. Following this description, strategies for unlocking lock-in, broadly and by domain, are explored before being contextualized to infrastructure systems. Ultimately, infrastructure managers must make a decision between a locked in and faltering but familiar system or a changing and responsive but unfamiliar system, where both are, inevitably, accepting higher levels of risk than typically accustomed.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10463760
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2634-4505
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 032001
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Disruption of legacy infrastructure systems by novel digital and connected technologies represents not simply the rise of cyberphysical systems as hybrid physical and digital assets but, ultimately, the integration of legacy systems into a new cognitive ecosystem. This cognitive ecosystem, an ecology of massive data flows, artificial intelligence, institutional and intellectual structures, and connected technologies, is poised to alter how humans and artificial intelligence understand and control our world. Infrastructure managers need to be ready for this paradigm shift, recognizing their systems are increasingly being absorbed into an emerging suite of data, analytical tools, and decisionmaking technologies that will fundamentally restructure how legacy systems behave and are controlled, how decisions are made, and most importantly how workers interact with the systems. Infrastructure managers must restructure their organizations and engage in cross-organizational sensemaking if they are to be capable of navigating the complexity of the cognitive ecosystem. The cognitive ecosystem is fundamentally poised to change what infrastructures are, necessitating the need for managers to take a close look at the functions and actions of their own systems. The continuing evolution of the Anthropocene and the cognitive ecosystem has profound implications for infrastructure education. A sustained commitment to change is necessary that restructures and reorients infrastructure organizations within the cognitive ecosystem, where knowledge is generated, and control of services is wielded by myriad stakeholders.more » « less
-
The value of information (VoI) provides a rational metric to assess the impact of data in decision processes, including maintenance of engineering systems. According to the principle that “information never hurts”, VoI is guaranteed to be non-negative when a single agent aims at minimizing an expected cost. However, in other contexts such as non-cooperative games, where agents compete against each other, revealing a piece of information to all agents may have a negative impact to some of them, as the negative effect of the competitors being informed and adjusting their policies surpasses the direct VoI. Being aware of this, some agents prefer to avoid having certain information collected, when it must be shared with others, as the overall VoI is negative for them. A similar result may occur for managers of infrastructure assets following the prescriptions of codes and regulations. Modern codes require the probability of some failure events be below a threshold, so managers are forced to retrofit assets if that probability is too high. If the economic incentive of those agents disagrees with the code requirements, the VoI associated with tests or inspections may be negative. In this paper, we investigate under what circumstance this happens, and how severe the effects of this issue can be.more » « less
-
Natural infrastructure (NI) and nature-based solutions in urban riverscapes can provide a spectrum of environmental, societal, and economic benefits, but widespread implementation of NI strategies remain limited because of their context-dependent nature. Windows of opportunity have opened through legislation and funding to expand NI solutions that address flooding, water quality, air pollution, extreme heat, and environmental equity. System-level approaches may offer these projects a framework that is flexible yet holistic enough to streamline implementation. In fact, a systems approach is essential to realize the potential of NI for equitably achieving these goals, and a critical step includes identification of vulnerabilities (e.g., exposure to environmental harm). The purpose of this study was to support decision makers and managers in prioritizing their urban riverscapes with multiple vulnerabilities: flood risk, water quality, ecosystem function, and environmental inequity. We conducted an urban stream spatial multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) case study with Charlotte–Mecklenburg Storm Water Services to support equitable and efficient stream reach, floodplain, and watershed planning. Our study assessed the social and ecological characteristics of the system and prioritized vulnerable watersheds and subbasins using a spatial MCDA. We developed an urban stream prioritization framework that could be tailored to complement existing management strategies and also more broadly implemented in other social–ecological systems.more » « less
-
Abstract Infrastructure must be resilient to both known and unknown disturbances. In the past, resilient infrastructure design efforts have tended to focus on principles of robustness and recovery against projected failures. This framing has developed independently from resilience principles in biological and ecological systems. As such, there are open questions as to whether the approaches of natural systems that lead to adaptation and transformation are relevant to engineered systems. To improve engineered system resilience, infrastructure managers may benefit from considering and applying a set of “Life's Principles”—design principles and patterns drawn from the field of biomimicry. Nature has long withstood disturbances within and beyond previous experience. Infrastructure resilience theory and practice are assessed against Life's Principles identifying alignments, contradictions, contentions, and gaps. Resilient infrastructure theory, which emphasizes a need for flexible and agile infrastructure, aligns well with Life's Principles, addressing each principle and most sub‐principles (excluding “breakdown products into benign components” and “do chemistry in water”). Meanwhile, resilient infrastructure practice only occasionally aligns with Life's Principles and contradicts five out of six principles. As resilience theory advances, Life's Principles offer support in broadening how infrastructure managers approach resilience, and by using biomimicry, infrastructure managers can be better equipped to deploy resilience for complexity and uncertainty.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1088/2634-4505/acf7e6
