CSIC Senior Research Associate Manu Sasidharan calls for incorporating resilience consideration into the planning and decision-making of infrastructure and integrating digitalisation into asset management practices to respond to potential infrastructure failure.
In his blog entitled ‘Resilient infrastructure systems – are we there yet?’, Manu Sasidharan provides an overview of the main challenges that lie ahead for infrastructure, in particular in urban areas where “the world’s urban population is projected to grow by 2.5 billion by 2050, reaching 68% of the total global population”. He claims that the climate change crisis, combined with the deterioration of old infrastructure, demand a thorough understanding of these challenges; the need to know how to manage them is key to developing more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities.
The blog highlights how infrastructure sectors are part of an interconnected network and the failure of one infrastructure can have disruptive spill-over effects on other services. Manu Sasidharan argues that “knowledge of the ability of the critical systems to respond and recoverfrom such disruptions is key”, and that entails reinforcing current systems through retrofits and upgrades as well as incorporating resilience concerns into the planning and design of new infrastructure.
In concluding his blog, Manu Sasidharan emphasises two main points, the need of more collaboration between asset managers and the introduction of digitalisation into asset management processes, so that critical systems can be monitored in real-time and potential problems can be quickly addressed.
Read blog here