Infrastructure in the Anthropocene

The changing nature of infrastructure in an accelerating, increasingly uncertain, and increasingly complex world

Infrastructure Tripartite

Infrastructure systems include governing and educational institutions, in addition to the physical assets.

Physical Assets

The core technologies that make up the backbones of modern infrastructure have persisted for decades, in some cases a century. The rigid nature of these assets is at odds with accelerating and uncertain environments.

Governing Institutions

Infrastructure governance with its actors, rules, processes, and norms were designed for twentieth century services. The institutions that manage infrastructure must have the requisite complexity of the environment their systems are operating in.

Educational Systems

Educational systems including universities and training must adapt to the changing conditions, requirements, and nature of infrastructure.

An Accelerating and Uncertain Environment

In framing the challenges for Infrastructure in the Anthropocene, we focus on several accelerating and uncertain variables.

Cyber Technology

The coupling of cyber technologies with physical assets is accelerating, creating a new paradigm for what infrastructure are and how they should be managed.

Society/Culture

Demands for infrastructure services are changing as societal and cultural preferences change.

Climate

The uncertainty and non-stationarity in future climate is inimical to the certainty based approaches that dominate infrastructure design.

Finance

Aging infrastructure combined with the other forces are likely to create new challenges for how infrastructure are financed.

Politics

Infrastructure decisionmaking is increasingly at the center of ideological polarization, making consensus on how infrastructure should change increasingly challenging.

Warfare

Infrastructure are increasingly battlefields in asymmetric warfare strategies that emphasize whole society conflict.

Selected Products

We have been exploring the changing nature of infrastructure through writings and research efforts. These writings explore the changing nature of physical assets, governance institutions, and educational systems.

  • September 2023

    Lock-in: origination and significance within infrastructure systems

    Environmental Research Infrastructure and Sustainability
    doi: 10.1088/2634-4505/acf7e6

    Alysha Helmrich, Mikhail Chester, Thaddeus Miller and Braden Allenby -  Infrastructure systems have legacies that continue to define their priorities, goals, flexibility, and ability to make sense of their environments.

  • August 2023

    Infrastructure and the cognitive ecosystem: an irrevocable transformation

    Environmental Research Infrastructure and Sustainability
    doi: 10.1088/2634-4505/aced1f

    Mikhail Chester and Braden Allenby -  Disruption of legacy infrastructure systems by novel digital and connected technologies represents not simply the rise of cyberphysical systems as hybrid physical and digital assets but, ultimately, the integration of legacy systems into a new cognitive ecosystem.

  • June 2023

    Sensemaking for Entangled Urban Social, Ecological, and Technological Systems

    Nature Urban Sustainability
    doi: 10.1038/s42949-023-00120-1

    Mikhail Chester, Thaddeus Miller, Tischa Munoz-Erickson, Alysha Helmrich, David Iwaniec, Timon McPhearson, Elizabeth Cook, Nancy Grimm and Samuel Markolf -  Embracing a SETS resilience perspective creates opportunities for novel approaches to adaptation and transformation in complex environments.

  • March 2023

    Dynamic Criticality for Infrastructure Prioritization in Complex Environments

    Environmental Research Infrastructure and Sustainability
    doi: 10.1088/2634-4505/acbe15

    Ryan Hoff, Alysha Helmrich, Abbie Dirks, Yeowon Kim, Rui Li and Mikhail Chester -  As infrastructure confront rapidly changing environments, there is an immediate need to provide the flexibility to pivot resources and how infrastructures are prioritized.

  • Fall 2022

    The Grind of Infrastructure Maintenance

    Issues in Science & Technology

    Mikhail Chester -  If we were to try to define the molecules of infrastructure, how those molecules interact, and how their structures and functions result in the systems we rely on today, we’d have to unpack the myriad people, tasks, bureaucracies, and environments that define infrastructures.

  • June 2022

    Balancing Efficiency and Resilience Objectives in Pursuit of Sustainable Infrastructure Transformations

    Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
    doi: 10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101181

    Samuel Markols, Alysha Helmrich, Yeowon Kim, Ryan Hoff and Mikhail Chester -  The dynamic balance between efficiency and resilience can play a central role in our infrastructure’s ability to successfully operate in environments that increasingly fluctuate between stable and unstable conditions..

  • February 2022

    Infrastructure Autopoiesis: Requisite Variety to Engage Complexity

    Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability
    doi: 10.1088/2634-4505/ac4b48

    Mikhail Chester and Braden Allenby -  Infrastructure systems will need to create the abilities to maintain themselves in the face of growing complexity by creating the knowledge, processes, and technologies necessary to engage environment complexity. We refer to this capacity as infrastructure autopoiesis.

  • January 2022

    Navigating Exploitative and Explorative Leadership in Support of Infrastructure Resilience

    Frontiers in Sustainable Cities
    doi: 10.3389/frsc.2022.791474

    Alysha Helmrich and Mikhail Chester -  Leadership is a critical component in approaching infrastructure resilience. What leadership capabilities do infrastructure organizations need to readily respond to stability and instability? An integrative leadership framework is proposed, exploring capabilities of collaboration, perception and exploration toward learning, and flexible informal and formal governance leveraged by leadership.

  • June 2021

    Centralization and Decentralization for Resilient Infrastructure and Complexity

    Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability
    doi: 10.1088/2634-4505/ac0a4f

    Alysha Helmrich, Samuel Markolf, Rui Li, Thomaz Carvalhaes, Yeowon Kim, Emily Bondank, Mukunth Natarajan, Nasir Ahmad and Mikhail Chester -  Pervasive across infrastructure literature and discourse are the concepts of centralized, decentralized, and distributed systems, and there appears to be growing interest in how these configurations support or hinder adaptive and transformative capacities towards resilience. There does not appear to be a concerted effort to align how these concepts are used, and what different configurations mean for infrastructure systems. We review framings of centralization, decentralization, and distributed (referred to collectively as de/centralization) across infrastructure sectors, revealing incommensurate usage leading to polysemous framings.

  • May 2021

    Transportation for the Anthropocene

    Transfers Magazine

    Mikhail Chester -  We are still designing, managing, and governing transportation systems that came out of a bygone era. Our principles, technologies, and governing institutions, as well as the decisions we make, reflect modes of thinking rooted in transportation goals from the industrial age, when many of our now aging highways, railways, and ports were first developed. New transportation systems must emphasize agility and flexibility, because today’s impossibilities may be tomorrow’s reality..

  • April 2021

    Can Infrastructure Keep Up With a Rapidly Changing World?

    Issues in Science & Technology

    Mikhail Chester -  Modern infrastructure can’t replicate the rigid systems of the past. In addition to building for flexibility and resilience, we must transform how we understand what infrastructure is and what it can do.

  • March 2021

    The Rightful Place of Science: Infrastructure in the Anthropocene

    Center for Science, Policy & Outcomes

    Mikhail Chester and Braden Allenby -  Humans are at the dawn of major shifts in the relationships among society, the environment, and technology. This transformation has profound implications for the design and management of the critical infrastructure that serves as the backbone for virtually every activity and service. Policymakers and the public have been largely able to ignore these systems, assuming that they’ll continue to function as they have in the past. This is no longer a reasonable assumption. It’s time to come to grips with the reality that the complexity of infrastructure is exploding, emerging and disruptive technologies are accelerating, history is no longer a reliable guide to the future—and education on these issues is insufficient.

  • February 2021

    Infrastructure Resilience to Navigate Increasingly Uncertain and Complex Conditions in the Anthropocene

    Nature Urban Sustainability
    doi: 10.1038/s42949-021-00016-y

    Mikhail Chester, B. Shane Underwood, Braden Allenby, Margaret Garcia, Constantine Samaras, Samuel Markolf, Kelly Sanders, Benjamin Preston and Thaddeus Miller -  Infrastructure are at the center of three trends: accelerating human activities, increasing uncertainty in social, technological, and climatological factors, and increasing complexity of the systems themselves and environments in which they operate. Resilience theory can help infrastructure managers navigate increasingly complexity. Engineering framings of resilience will need to evolve beyond robustness to consider adaptation and transformation, and the ability to handle surprise. Agility and flexibility in both physical assets and governance will need to be emphasized, and sensemaking capabilities will need to be reoriented. Transforming infrastructure is necessary to ensuring that core systems keep pace with a changing world.

  • February 2021

    Re-Imagining Design Storm Criteria for the Challenges of the 21st Century

    Cities
    doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2020.102981

    Samuel Markolf, Mikhail Chester, Alysha Helmrich and Kelsey Shannon -  Design storm criteria (i.e., the specific intensity and/or frequency to which infrastructure systems are designed to withstand) are a critical part of resilience efforts within urban and infrastructure systems. However, factors like climate change and increasing complexity within our urban systems call into question the viability of current approaches to and implementation of design storm criteria moving forward. This paper seeks to identify design practices and strategies that are well-suited for the increasingly complex and rapidly changing contexts in which our cities and infrastructure are operating.

  • January 2021

    Opportunities and Challenges for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications in Infrastructure Management during the Anthropocene

    Frontiers of Water
    doi: 10.3389/frwa.2020.551598

    Samuel Markolf, Mikhail Chester and Braden Allenby -  Pervasive and accelerating climatic, technological, social, economic, and institutional change dictate that the challenges of the future will likely be vastly different and more complex than they are today. As our infrastructure systems (and their surrounding environment) become increasingly complex and beyond the cognitive understanding of any group of individuals or institutions, artificial intelligence (AI) may offer critical cognitive insights to ensure that systems adapt, services continue to be provided, and needs continue to be met.

  • October 2020

    Urban Infrastructure: Reflections for 2100

    Amazon

    Sybil Derrible and Mikhail Chester -  Infrastructure systems deliver basic and critical services. They are the pillars of civilization. In the twenty-first century, infrastructure will need to change to fit the needs of a new world. What shape will they take? What function will they provide? Who will they serve and why? In this book, forty experts from around the world share their reflections for infrastructure at 2100. The book is a series of science fiction short stories, essays, and poems. Climate change, sustainability, resilience, and technology are recurring themes in the reflections. Written in 2020, it is impossible to predict how infrastructure will be in 2100. The goal of this book is not to make accurate descriptions of the future. Instead, it is to provide a dialogue and visions of what we could hope for or fear. Only time will tell on which side of the balance we end up leaning.

  • April 2020

    Toward Adaptive Infrastructure: The Fifth Discipline

    Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure
    doi: 10.1080/23789689.2020.1762045

    Mikhail Chester and Braden Allenby -  Modern infrastructure have been a relatively stable force for decades, ensuring that basic and critical services are met, without significantly changing their core designs or management principles. At the dawn of the Anthropocene it appears that accelerating and increasingly uncertain conditions are likely to result in a paradigm shift for infrastructure, where the environments in which they operate are changing faster than the systems themselves. New approaches are needed in the education, management/governance, and physical structures that constitute infrastructure systems that can respond in pace.

  • April 2020

    COVID-19 and Learning from Engineers

    Issues in Science & Technology

    Braden Allenby and Mikhail Chester -  Braden Allenby and Mikhail Chester - COVID-19 is a classic engineering problem that the United States has botched. Here’s how to reform the system in order to build in efficient resilience against both the current public health crisis and future ones.

  • April 2020

    What COVID has Taught Us About Infrastructure

    Issues in Science & Technology

    Mikhail Chester and Braden Allenby -  The rapid progression of COVID-19 is revealing challenges for infrastructure as the institutions that manage and deliver critical and basic services are having to respond to changes in demand and new operating conditions.

  • April 2020

    Industrial Ecology in Support of Climate Adaptation

    Journal of Industrial Ecology
    doi: 10.1111/jiec.13006

    Mikhail Chester -  The competencies needed to manage the increasingly complex landscape of human and natural systems in the Anthropocene are going to be very different than those that we have trained for in the past. Industrial ecologists should confront the question of what competencies are needed to contribute to the climate adaptation discussion and how existing capabilities can be positioned to support new science.

  • April 2020

    Keeping Infrastructure Reliable Under Climate Uncertainty

    Nature Climate Change
    doi: 10.1038/s41558-020-0741-0

    Mikhail Chester, B. Shane Underwood and Constantine Samaras -  Characterizing infrastructure vulnerability to climate change is essential given the long asset lives, criticality of services delivered and high costs of upgrading and maintaining these systems. Reconciling uncertainty from past infrastructure design decisions with future uncertainty of climate change will help prioritize limited resources to high risk assets.

  • February 2020

    The Cyber Frontier and Infrastructure

    IEEE Access
    doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2971960

    Mikhail Chester and Braden Allenby -  The accelerating integration of cyber technologies into physical infrastructure systems has radical implications for the operation, management, and vulnerabilities of our critical systems. Viewing the embedding of smart technologies in infrastructure as simply an interconnectedness of systems is insufficient. The acceleration of the coupling may represent a profound shift in the relationships between humans and their services.

  • January 2020

    Reconciling Complexity and Deep Uncertainty

    Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure
    doi: 10.1080/23789689.2019.1708179

    Alysha Helmrich and Mikhail Chester -  As climate change is emerging as a major challenge for man-made systems in the coming century, there has been significant effort to understand how to position infrastructure to adapt and deliver services reliably. Particularly, the climate is changing faster than the expected lifetime of critical infrastructure, resulting in situations well beyond the intended design conditions of a stationary climate.

  • December 2019

    5G, AI and big data - We’re building a new cognitive infrastructure and don’t know it

    Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

    Braden Allenby -  “Infrastructure” is a broad term for the physical and institutional systems that support human communities at all scales, from physical systems that have been necessary since the beginning of human urbanization, such as Rome’s road and water infrastructure, to newer forms that reflect cutting edge technology, such as 5G wireless systems. All infrastructure combines two functions. One is explicit: a road carries traffic, for instance, and water pipes carry water. The more subtle one is an enabling function, as all infrastructure also supports other technologies and more infrastructure. Electric infrastructure, for example, performs the explicit function of generating and distributing power; more importantly, it enables electrified housing, industrial production, and information and communications technology.

  • May 2019

    Infrastructure as a Wicked Complex Process

    Elementa
    doi: 10.1525/elementa.360

    Mikhail Chester and Braden Allenby -  Changing complexity in the increasingly integrated human, natural, and built systems within which our infrastructures are designed and operated make it necessary to examine how the role of engineering requires new competencies for satisficing. Several long-term trends appear to be shifting our infrastructures further away from the complicated domain where optimization and efficiency were the core approaches, to the domain of complexity, where rapidly changing environments and fragmentation of goals require fundamentally new approaches.

  • April 2019

    Infrastructure and the Environment in the Anthropocene

    Journal of Industrial Ecology
    doi: 10.1111/jiec.12848

    Mikhail Chester, Samuel Markolf and Braden Allenby -  For centuries, man‐made infrastructure has been viewed as separate from natural systems. Yet in the past few centuries, as the scale and scope of human activities have dramatically increased, there is accumulating evidence that natural systems are becoming increasingly, and in some cases entirely, managed by humans. The dichotomy between infrastructure and the environment is narrowing, and natural systems are increasingly becoming human design spaces.

  • March 2018

    Reconceptualizing Infrastructure in the Anthropocene

    Issues in Science & Technology

    Braden Allenby and Mikhail Chester -  The growing impact of human activities on all the Earth’s systems requires a concomitant change in the way we design and manage the built environment.

  • January 2018

    Toward Adaptive Infrastructure: Agility and Flexibility in a Non-stationarity Age

    Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure
    doi: 10.1080/23789689.2017.1416846

    Mikhail Chester and Braden Allenby -  As technologies rapidly progress, there is growing evidence that our civil infrastructure do not have the capacity to adaptively and reliably deliver services in the face of rapid changes in demand, conditions of service, and environmental conditions. Infrastructure are facing multiple challenges including inflexible physical assets, unstable and insufficient funding, maturation, utilization, increasing interdependencies, climate change, social and environmental awareness, changes in coupled technology systems, lack of transdisciplinary expertise, geopolitical security, and wicked complexity. These challenges are interrelated and several produce non-stationary effects.

Project Coordinators

Infrastructure in the Anthropocene efforts are led by Professors Chester and Allenby with support from many talented researchers at ASU.

Mikhail Chester
Braden Allenby
resilientinfrastucture.org
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