Designing the Future of Infrastructure: A Series of Short Essays
In October 2020, I left my full-time job in Consultancy to return to academia by taking up an MRes + PhD position at the University of Cambridge. Far from being a distant leap away from my work in Smart Cities, I joined a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) called Future Infrastructure and Built Environment: Resilience in a Changing World (FIBE2). If you’re curious about the program or even if you’re interested in applying (I’d highly recommend), you can check it out here. Of course, if you have any further questions about the program, please also feel free to get in touch.
As part of the work I was assigned during my first term at Cambridge, I wrote 7 essays exploring different aspects of infrastructure resilience and the ways industry and academia have sought to deliver infrastructure that is ready for the myriad challenges and changes facing the built environment in the short-, medium- and long-term. Following the completion of these essays and given the abundance of time we all seem to have to sit in front of a computer screen (thanks to COVID), I thought I’d work on converting my essays ready for publication here, and on LinkedIn.
For those of you panicked at the idea of expansive essays exploring the minutia of infrastructure design, fear not. These essays top out at around 1200 words each (with most closer to 1000) and should take little longer than 5mins to read. If you’re curious, then stay tuned. If you’re even further inclined to offer feedback, I’d love to hear your thoughts; just head over to the contact me page and send over your thoughts. Either that or find me on LinkedIn and pop me a message.
For your interest, here are the titles of each essay that I’ll be adapting and publishing:
Essay 1 - An Overview of Infrastructure Resilience
In this essay, I seek a clearer definition of resilience and discuss the need for resilience to be understood as a process, not just an action.
Essay 2 - Infrastructure Resilience in a Changing Society and Culture
This essay explores the non-technical components associated with infrastructure resilience and develops a case for careful consideration of the human side of infrastructure design.
Essay 3 - Infrastructure Resilience against Urbanisation and Demographic Change
This essay discusses the impacts of urbanisation and some of the key drivers behind it (i.e. climate change). It then seeks to apply a systematic perspective on utilising infrastructure proactively to deliver urban environments that are capable of supporting urbanisation and demographic change.
Essay 4 - Infrastructure Resilience against Environmental Change
Perhaps a more obvious topic for discussion; this essay seeks to develop a clearer picture of the impact of environmental change on infrastructure and discusses the ideas of interdependence between different infrastructure systems.
Essay 5 - Infrastructure Resilience against Technological Change
In this essay, the challenges associated with the increasingly short lifecycles of digital technology and their use in infrastructure are explored. The unintended consequences of infrastructure technological innovation are also discussed.
Essay 6 - Infrastructure Resilience in a World of Economic and Political Change
Likely one of the most contextually relevant essays, this essay explores the interactions between economic and political factors in the context of delivering resilient infrastructure.
Essay 7 - Reflections
This shorter essay presents a compact set of reflections from the reading and learning gathered during the research behind each of the preceding essays.
Just to highlight, these essays were originally written in response to a coursework brief which I will not be publishing. Despite this, I feel my current thinking, while perhaps immature, is at least accurately represented across these writings.
I hope you enjoy reading them.
