Abstract
Contemporary infrastructure networks require large investments especially due to aging. Investment opportunities of network-of-networks are often obscured because current scenarios often concern single infrastructure networks. Major barriers to the construction and use of network-of-networks scenarios are institutional fragmentation and the disconnection of scenario-development phases. This paper aims to construct and enhance the use of network-of-networks scenarios through a participatory scenario process. We employed a hybrid-method approach comprising document analysis, Disaggregative Policy Delphi, and futures-oriented workshop for five large national infrastructure administrations in the Netherlands. This approach yielded twelve key infrastructure developments for which 28 infrastructure experts provided future estimates. We constructed seven scenarios through cluster analysis of experts’ quantitative estimates, qualitative direct content analysis of the qualitative data, and a futures table. The scenarios are: Infraconomy; Techno-Pessimism; Safety; Technological; Missed Boat; Hyperloop; and Green. Our results stress the importance of collaboration: desired scenarios are improbable when infrastructure administrations maintain their current sectoral perspective, whereas an inter-sectoral perspective may generate more investment opportunities. However, these network-of-networks investment opportunities do not simply emerge from network-of-networks scenarios; reasons include administrators’ prevailing conception that sufficient optimization capacity remains within their own networks, and that no common ground exists that helps to overcome institutional fragmentation.
Highlights
Infrastructure planners in many western countries are increasingly confronted with new challenges
We argue that strategic infrastructure planning processes require insight in a set of possible futures – i.e., scenarios – that a network-of-networks is required to accommodate, and that those scenarios should be collectively enacted upon between infrastructure administrators
The research questions are: (1) what are possible scenarios on a network-ofnetworks level and (2) what are the consequences of the constructed scenarios for infrastructure planning? We focused our study on the Netherlands, because Dutch infrastructure planning is often characterized as institutionally fragmented, and because the country’s high spatial density of inhabitants and infrastructure networks gives rise to many interdependencies and possibly networkof-networks investment opportunities
Summary
Infrastructure planners in many western countries are increasingly confronted with new challenges. Received February 2020; Received in revised form August 2020; Accepted 5 October 2020 Considerable investments are needed to prevent infrastructure failures (EIB, 2015; OECD, 2017). These investments should address the long lifespan of infrastructures, because infrastructures are characterized by high sunk costs and invoke path de pendencies and lock-in; once constructed, infrastructures are not abandoned and they become sources of inertia (De Bruijne, 2006; Geels, 2004; Wegener & Fürst, 1999). Infrastructure planners should anticipate multiple possible futures (cf. Borjeson et al, 2006) collectively, given network interdependency effects (cf. Rinaldi et al, 2001)
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