Abstract
Ensuring long-term performance from key infrastructure is essential to enable it to serve society and to maintain a sustainable economy. The future-proofing of key infrastructure involves addressing two broad issues: (i) resilience to unexpected or uncontrollable events (e.g., extreme weather events); (ii) adaptability to required changes in structure and/or operations of the infrastructure in the future. Increasingly, infrastructure owners, designers, builders, governments and operators are being required to consider possible future challenges as part of the life cycle planning for assets and systems that make up key infrastructure. A preliminary study is reported here that aimed at exploring the following questions related to infrastructure (systems): what does ‘future-proofing’ of infrastructural assets mean? Why and when should critical infrastructure be future-proofed? How can infrastructure assets (systems) be prepared for uncertain future events? How can future-proofing considerations be incorporated into infrastructure asset management practices? To seek answers to the above questions, two industrial workshops were conducted that brought together leading practitioners in the UK infrastructure and construction sectors, along with government policymakers. This paper captures lessons learnt from the workshops and proposes a framework for linking future-proofing into asset management considerations. Case studies of Dawlish railway and Heathrow airport are also presented.
Highlights
The aim of this paper is to explore the ‘what, why and how’ of infrastructure future-proofing – ensuring that a nation’s infrastructure is fit for the future in addition to satisfying current needs
It emerges from discussions with related organisations that there is a lack of a structured, common approach for considering the changing future needs of infrastructure as part of its asset management plans
This paper has highlighted the key issues surrounding the issue of infrastructure future-proofing, explaining its importance, the major challenges and strategies that can be considered to future-proof infrastructure assets
Summary
The aim of this paper is to explore the ‘what, why and how’ of infrastructure future-proofing – ensuring that a nation’s infrastructure is fit for the future in addition to satisfying current needs. Infrastructure assets have long service lifetimes and are subject to a range of ‘disruptions’ over time such as extreme weather events, changes of use and ageing. Identification of such disruptions and developing a strategy for mitigating the risks of such disruptions through effective asset management processes is essential for long-term sustainability of infrastructure systems. To help industry move towards this goal, this paper proposes a framework for infrastructure future-proofing, which includes a set of criteria that can be used for assessing the level of future-proofing in existing infrastructure systems. The framework was developed through a number of case studies and by conducting two industrial workshops bringing together leading practitioners in the UK infrastructure and construction sectors, along with government policymakers
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