Strategic analysis of the future of national infrastructure

Abstract

There have been many calls for a more strategic, long-term approach to national infrastructure in the UK and elsewhere around the world. While appealing in principle, developing a national infrastructure strategy in practice poses major challenges of complexity and uncertainty. The UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium has set out a systematic methodology for long-term analysis of the performance of national infrastructure systems. It deals with each infrastructure sector – energy, transport, digital communications, water supply, waste water, flood protection and solid waste – in a consistent framework and assesses the interdependencies between sectors. The method is supported with the world’s first infrastructure ‘system-of-systems’ model, which has been developed for long-term decision analysis in interdependent infrastructure systems. This paper presents the Nismod model’s analysis in the National Needs Assessment report launched at the Institution of Civil Engineers in October 2016.