Sustainable infrastructure
Print (optimised for IE8)
Providing community infrastructure - urban density
Land tenure for community infrastructure investment
Vulnerability To natural hazards - Policy
Providing community infrastructure - sanitation and hygiene
Water supply to meet the MDGs
Rural infrastructure needs – water and sanitation
Rural infrastructure and agriculture
Infrastructure in disasters
MDGs, infrastructure and engineers' influence
Agendas within sustainable development
Understanding urbanisation
Urbanisation – community engagement
Infrastructure to serve the MDGs
Influencing infrastructure policy
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Providing community infrastructure - urban density
Card 4
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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Land tenure for community infrastructure investment
Card 14
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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Why won’t slum communities invest in infrastructure for water, sanitation and waste disposal?
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“Lack of secure tenure has a three-fold effect on society: firstly, people and business enterprises in the informal settlements are deprived of essential public services; secondly, the municipal governments receive no tax income to pay for any of the services they should provide to the settlements; and finally, the potential value of these properties constitutes personal and national wealth which remains inaccessible and unusable as collateral for borrowing for further investment.”
The State of the World’s Cities 2001, UN-Habitat, p33.
■ The majority of urban slum dwellers live as squatters, with no legal standing over the land they occupy
■ They often live in very precarious conditions and under constant threat of evictions and slum clearance programmes
■ Therefore, while it appears that slum dwellers are happy to invest in mobile infrastructure such as televisions and mobile phones, there is much less inclination for them to invest in more permanent infrastructure improvements, e.g. roads, drainage, sewerage, potable water, building improvements etc
- ■ It is unlikely that the MDG targets for infrastructure delivery will be achieved through public and donor funding alone
■ To meet the MDG targets it will be necessary to engage the private sector and secure funding from other sources
■ In many cases this will mean mobilising contributions from slum communities themselves, e.g. hard cash, materials and labour, as well as engaging them in the decision making process to ensure they take ownership of the infrastructure and that it is appropriate, affordable and easy for them to maintain
Image: Waste dump, Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya (photo: Paul Jowitt)
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Provide secure land tenure to mobilise community resources and accelerate infrastructure delivery
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Vulnerability To natural hazards - Policy
Card 8
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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How to build and improve resilience in cities?
- More risky world
■ The trend over the last three decades shows a sharp increase in the number and frequency of natural disasters
■ In 2005, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) reported that 360 natural disasters killed over 90,000 people and affected more than 150 million lives
■ In 2006, CRED reported 395 natural disasters (including 226 floods) with 21,342 deaths and over 134.5 million people affected
■ Experts predict this trend to continue; in particular global warming is likely to create more extreme weather events
Resilience: the ability of a system to absorb shocks and stresses without collapsing.
How to start assessing vulnerability?
We can start with knowing what hazards we are facing. The Disaster Database: EM-DAT maintained by CRED provides useful information and an objective basis for vulnerability assessment and the setting of priorities.
Why are cities so vulnerable to natural hazards?
While offering various advantages for the inhabitants: improved economic opportunities, easier access to basic services etc, cities also generate a large group of vulnerable people, concentrated in slums.
Their livelihoods are at risk due to their informal status, which reduces their labour access, prevents land tenure and restricts political rights. Other risks stem from their poor living environment and their dependence on the cash economy.
References:
The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters
The International Disaster Database
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Develop and implement a proper policy framework and integrated disaster management system
- Establish a framework for policy design
In order to capture people’s vulnerability to disasters, disruptions and stresses, as well as their capacity to be resilient in spite of the complexity of cities, a comprehensive analytical framework has to be developed. It dissects the vulnerability/resilience nexus of a city from three perspectives:
1) Global and local – cities are influenced by complex interwoven processes (economic, political, ecological, social etc) on different scales (from the local to the global)
2) Formal and informal – city governance depends on the interplay between formal and informal institutions
3) Social and ecological – cities must be conceived as coupled socio-ecological systems
References:
iii) United Nation University, June 2009 The MegaCities Resilience Framework
iv) OECD and OCDE publication Integrated Disaster Risk Management of China
- Develop an integrated management
system
Working example – integrated disaster
management system in China
China is one of the most natural disaster affected countries in the world. The Chinese government has been attaching much importance to disaster reduction work since 1949. Much structural and non-structural construction has been accomplished to improve the natural disaster resistant ability of China
Key elements in China's disaster management system
■ Disaster Risk Zoning
■ Directions for disaster reduction is established in three stages: pre-disaster, in-disaster and post-disaster
iii. Defining disaster region, victims and effects
iv. Confirmation of disaster reduction organisation
v. Confirmation of disaster management levels
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Providing community infrastructure - sanitation and hygiene
Card 10
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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How can we achieve sanitation and improved hygiene for all?
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- Facts
■ According to UNICEF, the annual cost of meeting the sanitation MDG targets is 9.5 billion dollars. Asked why sanitation targets had faltered, Dr Cho of the World Toilet Association identified lack of funds, and political and social apathy, as causes of the failure. However, this sum is less than 1% of world military spending in 2005 and one-third of the estimated global spending on bottled water
■ About 90% of sewage and 70% of industrial waste in developing countries are discharged untreated into water courses; contaminating the waters and constituting risk to humans and other species: threatening the ecological balance of the environment (UN/WWD, 2010)
■ The impact of inadequate sanitation has financial and economic implications. The economic return on a $1 investment in sanitation is $9.1 (Unicef/IYS Fact Sheet, 2008)
■ Inadequate sanitation also leads to time and effort losses. Girls bear the burden of water collection – for drinking as well as for personal and household hygiene. This can take many hours a day, leaving them with no time or energy for school. The WHO also estimates 194 million school attendance days would be gained annually if the sanitation MDG is met and diarrhoeal disease reduced.
Reference:
Unicef/ International Year of Sanitation Fact Sheet (2008)
UN/World Water Day (2010)
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Sanitation: world is off track for MDG target
At the current rate of progress, the world will miss the MDG target by 13%. An estimated 1.1 billion people still defecate in the open, excluding those with unimproved latrines. Unless huge efforts are made, the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation will not be halved by 2015.
WHO/Unicef JMP Report (2010)
Source: Morella, Foster and Banerjee 2008
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Use a pragmatic local approach, with an eye to wider environmental issues
- Population that needs to gain access to an improved sanitation facility to meet the MDG target, 2006-2015 (millions)
Case study
Ethiopia-Making Community Led Total Sanitation Approach Work
- Solutions
■ Lobby to push sanitation up the political ladder, with decisions about where to focus policy efforts along the sanitation ladder to be informed by access to sanitation patterns and the realities of different societies and cultures
■ Stimulate demand for sanitation and behaviour change where open defecation prevails
■ Hygiene education is critical. Promoting hygiene can start a virtuous cycle that builds demand for better sanitation, raising awareness of the benefits of sanitation and establishing codes of conduct and new life standards
■ Ensure adequate supply of materials to build improved latrines, before addressing demand in settings dominated by unimproved ones
References
ACID (2009) Africa’s Infrastructure: A Time for Transformation. Chapter 17, Sanitation: Moving Up the Ladder.
EF (2008) Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: Special Focus on Sanitation. New York and WHO, Geneva.
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Water supply to meet the MDGs
Card 12
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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Can there be potable water in every community by the year 2015?
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A systems approach to the development of water resources can deliver quicker results
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Rural infrastructure needs – water and sanitation
Card 15
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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How can the rural deficit in water and sanitation be addressed to meet the MDGs?
- Trends
■ The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report (2010) reported that the world was on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target for water but that the global sanitation target would be missed by a billion people - most of them in rural Africa and Asia
■ The disparity in coverage between urban and rural areas shows a serious inequity caused by a lack of effective rural pro-poor strategies
■ Many of the MDGs cannot be achieved unless rural poor people have access to and are involved in the planning and delivery of effective, efficient, and affordable water and sanitation services
■ In order to reduce poverty, coverage needs to be extended to the poorest in rural areas and shanty towns on city fringes
Source: WHO/UNICEF JMP Report (2010) Water Supply and Sanitation: Progress on Sanitation and Drinking-water
■ Seven out of 10 people without improved sanitation live in rural areas
■ 84% of the world’s population without an improved drinking-water source live in rural areas
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Provide rural pro-poor services and increase community involvement
- The following actions can improve access to services for the rural poor:
Pro-poor policies:
■ Strengthening pro-poor water and sanitation governance through policies and laws that introduce safeguards to the poor in rural areas and shanty towns on city fringes – e.g. promoting “the right to water” and ensuring minimum access levels to clean water and sanitation
■ Increasing local involvement, public awareness and political support for the water and sanitation needs of the poor in rural areas
Shattering the myths:
■ This includes beliefs that it is expensive to serve the rural poor with improved water supply and sanitation. This can be dispelled by providing appropriate lower-cost solutions e.g. on-site sanitation such as latrines can offer affordable and hygienic solutions
- Adopting community–based solutions wherever possible:
■ Addressing socio-cultural attitudes towards water and sanitation and involving women as agents of change e.g. Women in Sanitation and Brick Making Project Mabule Village, South Africa. Innovations such as the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) have also met great success among the poor in Asia
Community capacity development and empowerment:
■ Ensuring that donors/governments focus on both capital investment and provision of basic services while achieving complementary capacity-building in poor rural communities. This can be achieved by encouraging sustainability clauses in donor support/publicly funded projects
Further reading
WHO/UNICEF JMP Report (2010) Water Supply and Sanitation: Progress on Sanitation and Drinking-water
Asian Development Bank (2009) India’s Sanitation for All - How to make it happen
Community-Led Total sanitation
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Rural infrastructure and agriculture
Card 58
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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How to improve agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa??
- Role of agriculture
■ By 2030, Sub-saharan Africa’s (SSA’s) population growth rate is expected to be 2.1% per annum [1] – amongst the highest predicted
■ In SSA by 2015, 2 out of 5 are predicted to be living in poverty
■ An estimated 7 out of 10 of the world’s poor live in rural areas
■ Food security may not improve in many poor areas without increases in local agricultural production [1]
■ Without adaption measures, climate change is predicted to have a negative impact on crop production in SSA (decrease of 1.55% in one study [2])
Agricultural yields
“In future, 80% of increased crop production in developing countries will have to come from intensification: higher yields, increased multiple cropping and shorter fallow periods” [1]
Increased yields have a key role to play in providing food and alleviating poverty.
- Irrigation and efficiency
The terminology of ‘efficiency’ in irrigated agriculture is not always consistent, and can be misleading. An alternative to the traditional ‘efficiency’ definition considers what portion of water is consumed and what of the remaining is recoverable for other uses:
Consider: the catchment scale, the downstream users of non-consumed irrigation water, and catchment storage.
See [3] and [4] for useful discussions on this.
SSA is currently heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture (around 75% of cereals produced are under rain-fed) [5]. There is potential for appropriate increase in irrigated agriculture in SSA as whole (with opportunities varying by country).
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Consider the scale – smaller scale may be better
- Small-scale irrigation
Large scale irrigation schemes have not always been successful in SSA [6]. Small-scale irrigation schemes (SSIs) mean farmers and landowners being responsible for and managing their own irrigation on relatively small plots. SSIs can be beneficial because:
■ The reliance on outside support (where access may be difficult) is limited
■ Local labour and skills can be used to implement them, using equipment and management practices developed with the community
■ Small plots of land can be developed for irrigation as appropriate, even if the area as a whole is not suitable for large-scale irrigation
Examples
■ Use of groundwater for storage and irrigation. Impacts on groundwater resources and regulation are important factors here, but potential is good in some areas, see [7]
■ Bucket or drum drip irrigation systems
■ Pumps, e.g. treadle pumps, hand pumps, pressure pumps
Other issues to consider
■ Energy use and carbon emissions: agricultural emissions come from a large number of small emitters, three-quarters being in developing or transition economies [8] – how to quantify and address?
■ Changing patterns of settlement – urbanisation
■ Role of legislation and policy
■ Financing for small-scale irrigation –See [9]
■ Education and skills building for small-scale growers
- References
1. World Agriculture, towards 2015/2030: Summary Report, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO, 2002)
2. IFPRI Discussion paper 00873, Economy-wide Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, Calzadilla, et al (2009)
3. Efficient Irrigation; Inefficient Communication; Flawed Recommendations, Perry, C.; Wiley Interscience (2007)
4. Rethinking Water Scarcity: The Role of Storage, EOS Vol 90, No. 28 (2009)
5. Demand for products of irrigated agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, FAO (2006)
6. Increasing Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa through Farmer-managed Small-scale Irrigation Development, Vaishnav, T, Ambio Vol. 23, No 8 (1994)
7. Water Policy Brief, Issue. 32: Banking on Groundwater in Times of Change, IWMI (2010)
8. Stern Review, the Economics of Climate Change, Part IV, HM Treasury (2006)
9. Financing Small-Scale Irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa Vol 1, World Bank (2006)
Further reading
Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture – International Water Management Institute (2007)
Handbook for the Assessment of Catchment Water Demand and Use – HR Walling ford (2003)
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Infrastructure in disasters
Card 54
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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How can inappropriate infrastructure make conditions during floods and other natural disasters worse?
- Flooding is becoming more frequent in both developed and developing countries due to climate change.
The poorest in society are often the most vulnerable to flooding due to inadequate and/or inappropriate shelter and infrastructure, eg poorly constructed housing, poor drainage and sanitation infrastructure, unprotected water and power supplies and inappropriate waste disposal.
In addition to making flooding conditions worse, poor infrastructure can also lead to rapid spread of sanitary related diseases such as cholera during floods.
Case Study: Zambia, 2010
In March 2010, Zambia experienced torrential rains which led to extensive flooding with reports of immense damage to infrastructure, homes and crops.
Due to the heavy rains and poor drainage systems, the water, sanitation, and hygiene situation greatly deteriorated. Shallow wells, a source of drinking water, were contaminated with dirty water from collapsed pit latrines, and the water table rose, worsening the sanitary situation in the affected areas. Consequently there was an outbreak of cholera and other diseases. The worst affected areas in the City of Lusaka were the shanty compounds.
More details
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Conventional infrastructure such as piped sewerage and potable water supply networks connected to centralised water and wastewater treatment systems, paved roads, under-road drainage pipes and channels, bridges, combined sewer outfalls, solid waste collection systems etc can be expensive to build and maintain and are not always practical or affordable in a developing country context.
If communities are unable to operate and maintain their infrastructure correctly, it can fall into disrepair, disuse and can exacerbate conditions during floods and other natural disasters.
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How can inappropriate infrastructure make conditions during floods and other natural disasters worse?
For a sustainable approach to reducing vulnerability to flooding and other natural disasters:
Infrastructure must be robust and resilient against flooding, e.g. water and power supplies should be protected, water supply must be kept separate from wastewater, roads should be suitable to maintain access and egress route in disaster situations.
A community approach to Integrated Flood Risk Management is required – community involvement in decision making is essential.
See card 41 for further suggestions on improving resilience to flooding and adaptation measures.
- Take an innovative approach to measures that will speed up recovery following floods, e.g.
■ Provide communities with means of obtaining safe drinking water during and just after floods eg AQUABOX or water tanks and bottles for rainwater harvesting
■ Provide disaster relief training to local organisations to help them plan for disaster situations eg REDR
■ Implement weather monitoring and flood forecasting programmes with community phone trees to disseminate flood warnings quickly and allow communities time to prepare for flooding eg protect their water supplies and move to flood shelters
Further reading
Poverty and Climate Change – Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation, written for EC (2003)
Sustainable development through integrated flood management, by Vijai K. Mathur and the WMO Secretariat, WMO Bulletin (July 2006)
UN-HABITAT Climate Change Strategy (2010-2013)
WaterAid Technology notes (2008)
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MDGs, infrastructure and engineers' influence
Card 9
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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How can infrastructure delivery help to achieve the MDG targets?
Key issues
■ Lack of infrastructure may be the single biggest factor holding back the development of poor countries
■ The attainment of the MDGs directly or indirectly depends on the delivery of infrastructure to provide decent shelter, transport links, affordable energy and access to safe water and sanitation systems
Building the infrastructure to deliver the MDGs is not about a single project, but about the delivery of many. Each one complex in itself – but at the right scale and with the right planning, perfectly feasible. Each project delivery plan developing surplus skills and resources that can be rolled out to the next series of projects – scaling up the response. ICE President Professor Paul Jowitt (2008)
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Use infrastructure delivery procedures that allow physical needs to be met while addressing socio-economic issues
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Agendas within sustainable development
Card 74
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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Whose sustainability agenda matters?
- Whose agenda?
"There is some truth in the criticism that (sustainable development) has come to mean whatever suits the particular advocacy of the individual concerned" David Pearce, Anil Markandya and Edward Barbier (1989)
■ The needs, priorities and emphasis of governments, donors and NGOs on 'sustainable development' may not be well-aligned with those of local governments, communities or other organisations, even when a common commitment to 'sustainability' exists
■ Guthrie (2006) distinguishes between a 'developed world' agenda where the primary focus is on the sustainable and a 'developing world' agenda where the primary focus is on the development
■ In the same vein Watermeyer (2006) differentiates between a 'green agenda' where the primary focus is on the environment and a 'brown agenda' where the primary focus is on poverty and underdevelopment
■ Finding a balance between these varied objectives (which often are in tension) is one of the key challenges in designing 'sustainable' projects and an area where the engineer has significant influence
- What is 'Sustainable Development'?
The conceptual imprecision of sustainable development has been blamed for difficulties in establishing effective sustainable development policy (Carvalho, 2001); engineers must work to find their own interpretations of sustainable development that work for the project and infrastructure owner in question. Having an overarching framework that captures local and global, green and brown, now and then, may be important in making sure the agenda is not biased towards one particular emphasis. Mitchell et al (1995) identify four common principles underlying the generic concept:
1. Futurity (concern for future generations)
2. Equity (concern for today's poor and disadvantaged)
3. Public participation (concern that individuals should have an opportunity to participate in decisions that affect them)
4. Environment (concern for the protection of the integrity of eco-systems)
Global forces (globalisation, donor aid, international politics) and local concerns (economic development, local environmental impacts) should be understood as interlinked and inseparable, even if they sometimes seem at odds; denying the existence of either can only have negative effects on the inclusiveness of project design.
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Combine local and global, green and brown, 'now' and 'then'
- Sustainability in practice
Beyond influencing policy, engineers have opportunities to influence change most directly in two key areas: design (efficiency and responsiveness) and procurement (attaining primary and secondary objectives).
A more systems view of the world is needed and solutions at a systems level need to be developed to address the following two issues (Jowitt, 2009):
1. Engineering the world away from an environmental crisis caused in part by previous generations in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and profligate resource use.
2. Providing the infrastructure platform for an increasingly urbanised world and lifting a large proportion of the world's growing population out of poverty.
- Sustainability silos
While separation of sustainability concerns may be useful for understanding different agendas, 'achieving sustainability' will ultimately require tackling the linkages between the different components of development – decoupling economic development from environmental degradation being the most daunting and intractable challenge facing policy makers, scientists, planners and engineers.
References
■ Carvalho, G. O. (2001) Sustainable Development: Is It Achievable within the Existing International Political Economy Context? Sustainable Development
■ Guthrie, P. (2006). Sustainable Development Contexts: Evolution of Thinking and Sustainable Development Principles, ESD0 Course Notes, Centre for Sustainable Development, University of Cambridge
■ Jowitt, P.(2009). Now is the time. ICE presidential address. November.
■ Mitchell, G., May, A. and McDonald, A. (1995) Picabue: A Methodical Framework for the Development of Indicators for Sustainable Development International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology
■ Watermeyer, R. (2006) Poverty Reduction Responses to the Millennium Development Goals The Structural Engineer
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Understanding urbanisation
Card 13
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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What mix of policy and planning is important in responding to urbanisation?
- Understanding the demographics
■ At the beginning of the 21st century, the urban population was higher than the rural for the first time in history
■ 95% of urban growth in the next two decades will be in the 'less-developed' world
■ There will be 80 million new city dwellers a year
■ By 2030, 53% of the population in Africa will be urban
Urbanisation and poverty
■ A third of urban dwellers currently live in slums without clean water, adequate toilet facilities, or durable housing
■ The poor are urbanising faster than the population as a whole
■ The pattern of falling overall poverty with urbanisation is far less evident in Sub-Saharan Africa
Sources: National Research Council (1999) UN World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision www.un.org/esa/population
Further reading:
United Nations (2005) World Urbanization Prospects, www.un.org/esa/population
The Endless City, Urban Age Project, London School of Economics, www.urban-age.net
World Bank Research Brief (2007) http://econ.worldbank.org
Understanding the problem
One key observation is that while cities generate positive forces of creativity, innovation and economic development, rapid urbanisation can also induce negative spill-over effects that can aggravate social inequality and adversely impact the environment. Understanding the drivers behind urbanisation can help quantify some of its future impacts and help early identification of possible interventions/solutions that are likely to be needed to face the massive developmental challenges of cities in the 21st century.
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Balance land, labour and housing reform, underpinned by investments in basic infrastructure
Drivers and responses
Drivers for urbanisation are multiple, interlinked and complex. Many contextual factors will determine what drives urbanisation in specific circumstances and also what the impacts and challenges will be coming out of the process. Some of the key drivers (at both macro and personal scales), challenges and potential interventions are summarised below:
Complexity and flexibility
Because urban growth shows predictable trends at the macro level, there is an opportunity to adapt policy and planning practices to effectively incorporate flexibility in design of social, environmental and infrastructural programs. Understanding the overlap between the economic, social, cultural and environmental factors that drive urbanisation, and its outcomes, is central to this process.
Approaches and case studies
■ Integrated Urban Planning - Municipality of Curitiba, Brazil
■ Top-down Planning - Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), Mumbai
■ Transformational Architecture - Urban Think Tank, Caracas
■ Integrated Transport Planning - Transmillenio Bus Transit, Bogota
■ Institutions and mapping - Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme
■ Financial and policy models - Slum Upgrading Facility, UN-HABITAT
■ Community-led slum upgrading - Kounkuey Design Initiative, Nairobi
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Urbanisation – community engagement
Card 16
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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Why do we need to engage with slum communities?
- Community engagement means allowing and encouraging all those who have a stake in a process to have a say in how it is resolved.
Projects, which engage communities in the decision making, construction and operational processes, have a higher chance of success and rate of uptake than those which are seen to be imposed or gifted.
It is important that communities are engaged in a meaningful way. In the long term, tokenism will not help to create sustainable communities that drive change for themselves.
Engagement in the context of urbanisation
Currently, the number of people living in cities equals those living rurally. In the future more people will live in cities than rurally, therefore cities must adapt to accommodate people, and people must adapt to their new urban surroundings. A large proportion of these new urban dwellers are poor, coming to the cities to find economic opportunity. These people, whilst poor, are the growing cities’ greatest asset. If a city fails to engage with a majority of urban poor, it fails to fully use the largest human resource available to it.
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What are the possible consequences of failing to engage with the urban poor?
Civil unrest – stakeholder engagement and integration of the growing urban poor is crucial to maintain social cohesion.
Stunted economic growth – if the urban poor are not engaged, the cities themselves will not grow economically as other better-equipped and serviced cities compete on a global platform.
Deterioration in health – urban communities are growing at such a rate as to make it very difficult for the necessary infrastructure and healthcare provisions to be made without the help of the communities themselves. The spread of disease through these highly populated informal areas, will have a devastating affect on the health of the people living there.
Inefficient and wasteful use of resources – by engaging with communities, cities can prioritise and identify their needs, finding creative and tailored solutions which build on existing capacity.
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Develop appropriate solutions and build the capacity of communities
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Infrastructure to serve the MDGs
Card 11
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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Influencing infrastructure policy
Card 76
Topic: Sustainable infrastructure
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Do engineers have a role to play in developing public infrastructure policy?
Why is infrastructure policy important?
Infrastructure supports growth and sustainable development by providing services (inputs) to other productive processes (outputs), and to consumption.
A good policy is essential to ensure effective and efficient delivery of infrastructure.
Working Example: Australia Government
Reference: www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/publications
The prime rationale for infrastructure policy is enhancing infrastructure’s net contribution to improvement in societal well-being over time, or conversely, reducing the expected severity of service failures.
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Engage in the infrastructure policy making process
- Supply input data
1) Help to price the infrastructure
Engineers can initiate and provide technical data to define the Asset Service Index (ASI) which is the foundation of the Asset Management System
ASI = ((Replacement Cost)*Remaining Service Life/Expected Life)actual - ((Replacement Cost)*Remaining Service Life/Expected Life)model
Working Example: New Zealand Government
Reference: International Infrastructure Management Manual
2) Impact assessment
The process of identifying, predicting, evaluating and mitigating the biophysical, social and other relevant effects of development proposals prior to major decisions being taken and commitments made.
Reference: International Association for Impact Assessment
- Bring primary and secondary objectives into procurement
Incorporate the social, environmental, cultural, economic development objectives in procurement system.
Working Example: South Africa
Watermeyer, R (2006) Poverty Reduction Responses to the Millennium Development Goals, The Structural Engineer
Evaluate the result and give feedback
The planning, construction, operation and maintenance of the infrastructure needs to be continuously evaluated so as to assess the performance of infrastructure assets and provide data for improvement
Working Example: South Africa
Reference: SAICE (2006) SAICE Infrastructure Report Card for South Africa: 2006