The design and development of next generation infrastructure systems

The world economy is served by a set of critical infrastructures in areas such as transportation, power, communication, water, and energy. In the past, infrastructure design used traditional engineering design approaches, which focused primarily on the technical requirements. This paper describes how next generation infrastructures should be treated as large-scale complex engineering systems requiring different frameworks, methodologies and design principles. Next generation infrastructure development requires a holistic perspective which includes organizational and contextual factors in addition to technical factors as an integral part of the design process. We propose different design approaches, utilizing uncertainty management, which are based on sustainability as an over-arching design principle. Particular attention in the paper is given to security considerations and the development of self-monitoring intelligent infrastructure.