Infranomics

There is a growing number of ports with sustainable policies. At the moment most of these policies are focused on clean transport. This study handles ports themselves by implementing sustainable criteria for the procurement of infrastructure projects. The aim is to get a balance between People, Planet and Profit. This means that those sustainable criteria have to be compared with the investment costs. A solution of this problem is given by setting a procurement model based on the so called concordance analysis, in combination with criteria which are based on the 3P theory and Life Cycle Analysis. Furthermore, the position of both client and contractor are taken into account by giving recommendations about contracting forms. As part of the research interviews were done with stakeholders as governments, port authorities and contractors. These interviews formed a basis for the obtained model.

In this chapter, authors put forward a port layout design approach for an exposed container terminal. This is an unusual approach for this type of terminal because of the associated strict vessel motion criteria. Nevertheless, in view of increasingly bigger container ships that will respond less to environmental conditions, the proposed approach departs from traditional ideas on wave sheltering in ports. The chapter discusses associated advantages and disadvantages. Aside from potential economic benefits, advantages of such an approach could be smaller coastal impacts and larger sustainability. For the disadvantages we present possible directions in which we foresee that solutions could be found to overcome those (technical) limitations. After the remaining technical issues have been solved, and when the business plans of ports can facilitate this new approach, the concept of an open water port is expected to form a more sustainable alternative to traditional port layout design approaches.

Sustainability has become a high profile objective in all aspects of our lives, including the development of our infrastructures. Flexibility can enhance sustainability endeavors, yet its contribution is not clear to most. In this chapter, authors investigate the role of flexibility in sustainable port development in order to promote its incorporation in port projects. We establish that the greatest payoffs from flexibility are achieved through initiating new life cycle for a capital-intensive port infrastructure, though reuse of the elements and materials also contributes to flexibility. Reuse concurrently optimizes use of natural resources, limits waste and pollution in the environment, conserves energy, and thus limits the overall negative ecological impact. It also results in significantly lowers lifecycle costs. Thus, flexibility helps achieve (long-term) financial viability in face of economic uncertainty, while reducing environmental and social impacts. Therefore, flexibility considerations are important during design, procurement, and contracting of engineering projects. The best way to redirect the choice of decision-makers towards flexibility is to make visible its long-term benefits, and its contribution to sustainability. We discuss some evaluation methods and propose that the quantitative methods are more likely make a case for flexibility.

This chapter focuses on identifying and analysing the elements of Strategic Management for infrastructure and engineering assets and asks: what are the considerations and implications for adopting and implementing an integrated strategic asset management framework? We contend that corporate governance, policy, objectives and strategy as well as interagency collaboration should be considered as elements in a ‘staged approach’ to understanding how assets are managed within organisations. This will allow for a more comprehensive framework for engineering asset management that considers social and contextual elements. Asset governance details the policies and processes needed to acquire, utilise, maintain and account for an organisation’s assets. It stems from corporate governance principles and defines the management context in which engineering asset management is implemented. This will be examined to determine the appropriate relationship between organisational strategic management and strategic asset management to further the theoretical engagement with the maturity of strategy, policy and governance for infrastructure and engineered assets. The chapter draws on a document analysis of corporate reports and policy recommendations in terms of infrastructure and engineered assets. The chapter concludes that incorporating an integrated asset management framework can promote a more robust conceptualisation of public assets and how they combine to provide a comprehensive system of service outcomes.

Comprehensive asset management should be embedded in organisations through the temporal, organisational and spatial dimensions. We examine how an integrated approach to asset management might consider the whole range of interrelations and interactions of these dimensions. Asset management should take into account the operational and the strategic management of the asset (time dimension) as well as organisational, technology and information and human factors management (organisational dimension). Furthermore, the inclusion of management topics arising from interaction between assets, stakeholders and clients, ecological environments, industry, and government is critical (spatial dimension). We argue that a strategic standpoint for asset management establishes a framework that includes governance, policy, tactical and operational aspects that are brought into a comprehensive integrated approach. Prior frameworks have identified the various elements that need to be considered. However, they have not addressed their operationalisation and neglected governance and broader contextual factors in building an asset management model. We present an integrated asset management approach to developing a capability maturity model which addresses all three outlined dimensions. To do so it is necessary to define asset management process areas, capability and maturity levels, and capability and maturity indicators for each process area.

Corporate or public organizations often own a real estate portfolio which has been acquired to serve certain organizational goals. However, some buildings in the portfolio might no longer serve these goals and could be sold or, conversely, buildings that could serve goals can be acquired. Choosing the combination of interventions that meets these different goals best is a multi-criteria group decision-making problem. Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methodologies enable the aggregation of the performance rating of alternatives on different criteria into an overall performance rating. Given that criteria are properties by which to measure the portfolio’s performance MCDA approaches should help to find the intervention that meets different goals best. A survey on such approaches showed that they (1) use preference scales to which mathematical operations do not apply or (2) do not have a well-defined procedure for selecting the most preferred portfolio. In this chapter, a design methodology using preference scales to which mathematical operations are applicable has been converted into a portfolio design methodology so that it (1) allows all decision-makers to iteratively enter their criteria and preferences and (2) orders all possible portfolios based on the overall preference rating. It has been evaluated based on a case simulation with data from a Dutch municipality.

In case of emergencies, the population in danger should be alarmed so individuals can take action to get or remain out of danger. The means available for alarming the population are limited. Many countries have outdoor sirens. Their operability however is restricted since sirens have only one implicit instruction. In 2012 a new citizens’ alarming and informing system was introduced using cell broadcast in The Netherlands. This chapter discusses the field of citizens’ alarming and the type of technologies available to communicate to the population. This framework is relevant for understanding how one should asses a new technology from a safety point of view. One of the challenges for the new alarming service is the composition of a short text message to alarm the population via their mobile phone, which is complete, relevant and correct for situation. This new field is recently being explored. We explain amongst others how the not yet known disaster is dominant for the message content and explain how a message can be composed. Results from workshops with experts from the emergency rescue services are discussed. We rounds off arguing dilemmas in order to get to effective citizens’ alarming via the new service.

This chapter proposes application of framework of system design of a special zone for reconstruction of Fukushima Prefecture which suffered serious damages from the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The framework of system design used in this chapter is called the Interactive Social Design Model (ISDM). The ISDM is useful for aggregating stakeholders’ requirements and values through the process of the interactive and bottom-up communication with stakeholders, and derivation of the optimal policy in quantitative approach. In this chapter, the optimal policy designed by the ISDM for the purpose of reconstruction of Fukushima is compared with the existing system of the special zones for reconstruction, in which local governments which suffered from the earthquake can choose support measures from the catalogue of policy measures designed by the central government of Japan.

This chapter is aimed at analyzing the energy consumption of transportation industry in China and its relationship with national energy security from a macro and quantitative point of view. Based on analyses of historical transportation energy demand and relevant planning policies, regression models were established in order to estimate the demand and structure changes of transportation. Combined with the main factors affecting transportation energy consumption, an econometric model was established using the Partial Least Square Regression method to analysis and predict the transportation energy consumption scenarios as well as energy-saving rate in China in the middle and long-term. Study results confirm that China’s transportation demand and its energy consumption will keep growing within a period of time, and transportation structure has changed a lot in the past two decades, with road and air transport currently the fastest developing transport modes. Future growth of transportation system’s energy consumption, especially petroleum consumption will pose a serious threat to energy security in China. Technique substitution, especially in road transport mode may significantly mitigate the energy gap.

Water is recognized to pose some very urgent questions in the near future. A significant number of people are deprived of clean drinking water and sanitation services, with an accordingly high percentage of people dying from water borne diseases. At the same time, an increasing percentage of the global population lives in areas that are at risk of flooding, partly exacerbated by climate change. In this chapter, it is argued that ethics should be an integrated part of water governance in order to address these pressing issues. This chapter consists of two parts. In the first part, some conceptual groundwork is done to clarify a number of persistent ambiguities and misunderstandings in the debate on water governance. In the second part, three distributive questions are outlined, concerning (1) the distribution of scarce resources, (2) the distribution of risks, and (3) the distribution of responsibilities. The chapter concludes with an outline for an ethics of water governance.

This is the century of the city. Climate change, fossil fuel depletion, rapid urbanization and the continued escalation of energy consumption are accelerating the critical and global need for resource efficiency toward a future of low-carbon cities. To that end, new waves of development in novel urban technologies may play an important role in sustaining the growth of existing cities as well as empowering the sustainable planning and design of new townships. First, this chapter highlights renewable energy–based alternative urban technologies (AUTs) that may aid in the significant reduction of urban carbon emissions, and then proposes a general classification system of technological systems and discusses AUT future trends. The review part of this chapter seeks to establish state of the art of AUTs that target three primary urban systems: the built environment, transportation and energy.

Engineering courses, focused on complex, sociotechnical systems, at the undergraduate level, have been rare. Traditionally, most students develop technical understanding in a specific engineering discipline, but get little opportunity to analyze engineered complex systems, where both technical and social issues need to be well understood for devising long lasting solutions. In this chapter, authors describe the motivation, design, and learning outcomes of an introductory course on Engineering Systems that has been developed and offered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The course is based on the theme of critical contemporary issues (CCIs) including energy, mobility, sustainability etc. The aim of the course is to expose undergraduates to quantitative tools for methodically analyzing complex contemporary engineering challenges. The course consists of lectures on system dynamics, networks and uncertainty, along with semester-long team-based projects. For the first pilot offering of the class (Spring semester 2011), the students gave an average rating of 5.9/7.0 regarding how likely they were to recommend this class to others (7 being absolutely certain). There was also evidence (however, based on limited and anecdotal data) of continued student interest (outside of class) in engaging with the complex socio-technical problems they worked on during the term.

This contribution evaluates serious gaming as a mean to better educate decision makers that have to manage system of systems. Systems of systems are understood to be operationally and managerially independent, geographically distributed, are developed evolutionary, and show emergence. Each infrastructure is constrained by the principles of infranomics, embracing the totality of the technical components, stakeholders, mindframes, legal constraints, etc. In simulation, the agent-based paradigm has been identified to support systems that can best support such an environment for a game.

The built environment accounts for a significant proportion of energy consumption in the Netherlands and elsewhere. It is estimated to be responsible for 33 % of national greenhouse gas emissions. This substantial proportion makes it an essential sector to address in the sustainable transitions agenda. In the Netherlands, it is apparent that the energy transition of the built environment with the current policies is much slower than required given the urgency of the foreseeable problems and the substantive system delays. Hence, there seems to be a need for experimentation with innovative policy instruments, governance mechanisms, and systemic conditions to fill the gaps in understanding. In this context, this chapter explores the use of games for understanding why there is so much inertia in the transition process. To arrive at some conclusions the authors develop a System Dynamics Model-Based experimental game, for hypothesis-testing purposes. Results of the game are provided and the chapter concludes with exploring possible future research.

Climate change poses a range of threats to our various infrastructure systems. Among the myriad of hazards, increased precipitation and sea level rise may inundate transportation networks and heat waves may stress our electricity grids. These threats may require new ways of managing uncertainty and making decisions. Climate change adaptation planning is being proposed as an important part of infrastructure management and decision-making moving forward, but is not yet well developed or integrated as an area of practice. Various tools and approaches may be employed under the umbrella of effective adaptation—including scenario planning and multi-stakeholder decision-making—but they have not been fully embraced by stakeholders. Facilitating the uptake of new tools to effectively address nascent, complex and uncertain challenges by infrastructure-related institutions is no easy task. Role-play simulation exercises (RPS) offer one way in which we can explore issues and options with decision-makers and other stakeholders. These exercises provide safe spaces in which stakeholders that are not used to working together directly can interact and experiment with tools and approaches not traditionally employed. Simulations make it possible to zero in on the key issues while pushing those of less importance into the background.

Engineering design is conventionally regarded as a mono actor optimization problem and modeled accordingly. Decision-making, values and optimality are building blocks of conventional engineering design. However, with the advent of decentralized decision making processes, various actors are more likely to be involved in decision making processes in engineering design. As a response in this chapter, authors attempt to claim that engineering design is inherently multi actor and has game-like characteristics. Accordingly, a research agenda is put forward.

As the eventual concept of governance has yet to emerge, traditional sources of power and authority symbols will always be at risk of falling short or even failing catastrophically. This is a daunting challenge since the actual governance landscape have dynamically evolved far more sophisticatedly than the usual well-framed “control” models that are embedded within traditional domains of administrative, public administration and political theories. The purpose of this paper is to articulate an alternative analysis of governance-relevant themes based on systems theoretic principles. This study utilizes a system-of-systems (SoS) conceptualization of governance that relates (1) a ‘governed’ system—the target of governance, with (2) a ‘governing’ system—the direct controller of the ‘governed’ system, (3) a ‘metagovernance’ systems—a metasystem that strategically influences the ‘governing’ system directly and the ‘governed’ system indirectly, and (4) its contextual environment—as anything external to the supposed SoS boundary. The paper will discuss how the symbols of governance that perpetuate “myths of control” thinking within the emergent infranomics discourse will be better understood incorporating for instance pluralist perspectives, role of the observer, and information—a few example of concepts and principles that are well-articulated in systems-based theories and approaches. The main contribution of this study is a set of systems-based ideas representing governance that will continue to remain relevant in spite of emergent problems and increased complexity.

First, the authors set the scene by exploring the main lines of the present development debate. They take a nuanced stand, not only looking at failures of Western development initiatives, but also going into the internal dynamics of African societies that stand in the way of social and economic development. Next, authors present some case studies of entrepreneurial development initiatives in Kenya. These cases show the difficulties in terms of organization and capacities such initiatives have to deal with and they take into consideration the bigger picture in terms of sector development, regulation, and finally civil society and governance issues. Kenya is caught up between a value set of traditional values adapted to small-scale ethnic societies, which doesn’t exercise its cohesive function like it once did and the modern large-scale and open civil society values, which are not yet fully in place. Authors contend that progress must involve a mutual reinforcement involving combination of entrepreneurial skills and capacities (i.e. initiatives from below and adequate institutionalization and regulation from above).

This chapter discusses the security of power transmission systems from a structural perspective. It introduces a systematic concept of structural analysis for power grids security assessment applying extended topological approaches based on an adaptation of the theory of complex networks modified to capture the physical behavior of transmission networks as “flow networks”. The concept of structural analysis is introduced as an alternative approach for discussing the relation between structure and state of power grids. A general review of complex networks applied to power grids security serves as introduction to a discussion of the shortcomings of pure topological approaches. Finally, authors describe the proposed systematic extended topological approach. In this chapter, “entropic degree” and “T-betweenness” are used to provide a measure of the criticality of buses and lines of transmission networks. Then, authors proceed with a dynamic way to rank critical components. Third, integration the previous concepts as metrics for distinguishing important components from critical ones, and for indicating their correlations are done. Finally, taking an overall perspective, and departing from net-ability, authors discuss the concept of path-redundancy as a new metric for survivability.

When designing a new system, engineers must often select from a set of discrete technologies available for use. Once the engineers select these technologies, they subsequently determine the value of continuous variables (e.g., lengths, thicknesses, other dimensions) that describe the new system. This mix of discrete and continuous choices can make it difficult to identify the best design. Additional difficulties arise when—as for most new systems—a trade-off exists between multiple, competing objectives. From a design optimization perspective, the resulting problem is a Multi-Objective, Mixed-Discrete Non-Linear Programming (MO-MDNLP) problem. The solution to an MO-MDNLP problem is not a single design; it is a set of non-dominated designs. In this set, the performance of one objective cannot improve without degrading performance in the other objective(s). However, the design process requires that a single design emerge as the best candidate; this best design needs to reflect the decision-maker’s preferences. The Surrogate Worth Trade-off (SWT) method is one approach that provides an interface between the decision-maker’s preferences and the mathematical models. This paper applied the SWT method to a simple example MO-MDNLP problem to determine how this might support a decision-maker in selecting new technologies during the early phases of design.

Although the field of Engineering Systems (ES) is young, its intellectual roots originate far back in time. Tracing these roots is the objective of an integrative capstone assignment in the first doctoral subject for incoming ES PhD students at MIT. Teams of two or three students research the intellectual connections between a specific historical root and modern ES method. The assignment has now been offered for 5 years (2008–2012). This chapter describes the faculty and student perspectives on the assignment, including the perceived learning outcomes, and insights gained into the roots of Engineering Systems. Some overall observations include: (1) Interconnections among almost all selected topics are apparent. The historical development of each topic gives rise to overlap and complex interactions between historical roots and modern methods; (2) Students cite Herbert Simon’s work as most pivotal to the roots of Engineering Systems. Jay Forrester, John von Neumann, Norbert Weiner, Joseph Schumpeter and others are also identified as having a significant impact; (3) The faculty always learn something about the field from what the students find even when topics are repeated; and, (4) The assignment is a valuable, though imperfect, vehicle for learning about Engineering Systems and for launching budding researchers’ efforts in the field.

Academic departments in the field of critical societal infrastructures need to assess and upgrade their existing programs and course offerings for several important reasons such as: (1) to regularly assess a curricula’s structure, (2) to maintain competitiveness, (3) to assess the resiliency of a given academic program, and (4) to ensure its relevance to the fast changing environment and context among others. This work builds on previous work to apply the previously developed resiliency assessment methodology to compare and ascertain some similarities and divergences in two Engineering Management programs, albeit in the same discipline but offered in different countries. A graph theory-based complexity perspective was used as a tool to make a comparative assessment of the course offerings between the two programs. Specifically, we can regard a Graduate program offering as a multi-component (many body) system consisting of its internal connectivity (i.e. combination of course offering as member interactions) defining structural complexity and as a source of vulnerability, hence resiliency. Authors propose an alternate methodology that combines the state-of-the-art in clustering text analysis as well as complexity-induced vulnerability quantitative methodologies recently used in performance quantification of complex systems.

Risk management in large-scale infrastructure projects is attracting the attention of academics and practitioners alike. After a brief summary of the theoretical background, this chapter describes how the risk analysis and risk management shapes up in a current large-scale infrastructure project in the Netherlands. The project in question is Spoorzone Delft, which involves the construction of a railway tunnel, the demolition of a railway viaduct, and the realisation of some 1,500 housing units, 20,000 m² of office space, covered parking lots, bicycle sheds, new civic offices and a ticket hall in a railway station. ProRail and Ontwikkelingsbedrijf Spoorzone Delft B.V. drew up a risk management plan to identify potential risks and to present strategies for controlling or reducing them. It emerged that risks were determined and quantified largely based on subjective estimates. The risk inventories exhibit strong dynamics from quarter to quarter. The findings indicate that it would be sensible to concentrate more closely on the insurability of risks and to differentiate between risks at system level and component level. The academic theory advises a stronger orientation towards flexibility and the identification of options.

A very fundamental need in transition studies is a general modelling framework that allows representing the state of different systems, as well as the change processes related to reinforcing or counteracting their transitions. Such a framework is needed in order to be able to benchmark different transition cases and to integrate case-specific insights for developing general understanding. This chapter briefly presents a general modelling framework, Actor-Option Framework (AOF), for modelling transitional change processes of socio-technical systems. The framework provides a toolbox with conceptual components and a structure about the way these components can be combined for representing a particular system of concern. AOF is based on an extensive set of empirical cases on technological change and socio-technical transitions. The general applicability and appropriateness for developing quantitative and qualitative models of change is assessed through a set of modelling exercises.