Jim Johnson, director at ARUP and digital leader in the UK, India, Middle East and Africa region, argues that, as the future of human civilization increasingly depends on smart infrastructure, reaching the best solutions for italso hinges on bringing people and human behaviour into the equation.
In his blog entitled On designing our human future, Jim Johnson provides an overview of the development of the meaning of the word infrastructure “now being commonly used to describe the structures and systems that support the operation of society”.
He suggests that while technology allows ‘smart’ operations of these systems and their large-scale interactivity, the main challenge is to consider human behaviour while designing future smart infrastructure systems. He goes to say that we also need a new approach to data and data sharing: “Working with sensitive data around human emotion and behaviour will inevitably create ethical dilemmas (…). Much work is still required to establish social frameworks as well as technological frameworks for data sharing”.
In concluding his blog, Jim Johnson calls for a strategy “to place professionals who understand people and society at the centre of thinking; with the right consideration, the emergence of genuinely smart infrastructure will allow civilisation to flourish!”
Read full blog here