A Novel Approach to Infrastructure
Driving a New Approach
Why InfrastructureNext?
Photo by Aaron Volkening / flickr
InfrastructureNext increasingly resonates with city staff, local leaders, businesses, and residents because it reframes infrastructure investments from cost to value. The value derived from the community benefits it provides, the community values it addresses, and the incomparable value of infrastructure resilient to shocks posed by climate change.
The InfrastructureNext model was born out of the need expressed by utilities and city leaders for their infrastructure investments to do more than solve a single issue. All infrastructure has a useful life range and as the average age of critical infrastructure like water treatment plants, energy networks, pipe networks, and roads gets older, maintenance turns to replacement.
City leaders and staff must replace costly aging infrastructure with budgets designed for maintenance. They simply cannot afford to address their infrastructure needs with single-purpose solutions.
Climate change impacts have disrupted weather patterns. Droughts, floods, heatwaves, and wildfires have placed a premium on infrastructure investments that bend with these shocks instead of break. InfrastructureNext guides the infrastructure planning process to consider other needs and values of the community like preparedness for wildfires, water security for farmers, thriving fish streams for local anglers, and resilience in the face of heatwaves. The hallmark of the InfrastructureNext process is reaching consensus on a solution set that solves an immediate infrastructure purpose and yields additional community benefits. These other community benefits increase community resilience. For example:
Rain gardens that manage road runoff also charge the water table for drought resilience and reduce urban heat island effect for heat wave resilience.
River edge trees that provide shade and cool the water to the benefit of the wastewater utility also builds fish habitat resilience to heat waves.
The InfrastructureNext approach gets the most value out of infrastructure investments by addressing multiple issues and offering more co-benefits to the community. Join us in building infrastructure that builds a more resilient community.