This week in Infrastructure Systems:
- On 21-22 June here in Washington, DC, the National Academies will host a Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) on Smart Cities. This looks to be an exciting event, with dynamic speakers including Carlo Ratti, Gordon England, Sokwoo Rhee, and many others. In the words of the National Academies...
This meeting will explore the common characteristics of smart communities, the role of connectedness and sustainability in developing smart communities, and the partnerships between governments, universities, and industry that are integral to advancing smart community development. - Pennsylvania has been out in front thinking about how to deal with wastewater produced by hydraulic fracturing. Today, their efforts were vindicated as EPA has moved to ban the disposal of produced water at public wastewater treatment plants. The contaminants routinely found in such produced waters, including heavy metals, high concentrations of dissolved solids, and chemical additives of unknown composition often cannot be removed by the treatment technologies employed by public systems. EPA's rule, the Pretreatment Standards for the Oil and Gas Extraction Point Source Category, will force some innovative thinking around the treatment of hydraulic fracturing wastes.
- This week, the FCC determined that broadband internet should be regulated as a public utility. This will set up some exciting discussions among all stakeholders involved, as the US has been engaged in a discussion over net neutrality, broadband as a critical infrastructure, and the appropriate levels of public involvement in provision of broadband services.
- Finally, GovTech asks the question: "Should CFOs run American Infrastructure?" Closely related is the thought: "How to stop the endless deferred maintenance cycle." It is often difficult for local politicians to invest the requisite funds to maintaining infrastructure assets, when it can often be more sexy to break ground on a brand new project. What changes need to happen in order for us to take the full life-cycle cost of an infrastructure asset into account, when that asset can last upwards of 50 years or more? Emerging approaches to infrastructure investment include public-private partnerships (P3s), value for money (VFM), and performance-based infrastructure (PBI). All of these start at the local level, and involve a full-cost approach to assessing the value of infrastructure projects. What do you think? What kind of changes are in order?