Our society will demand more functionality, capacity and quality of infrastructures than they can deliver right now. Our objective is to ensure long-term flexibility for the next generation of infrastructures, while maintaining their stability and reliability.
Modern society is changing rapidly, but our infrastructures are lagging behind. As large scale, complex, capital-intensive systems with long life cycles, they lack the flexibility to adapt to our ever-changing demands. It is important to realise that most traditional infrastructures were not designed as public systems.
Our electricity, gas and telephone networks for instance - which originated in the 19th century - were initially run by private utility companies serving local markets. Because of the public significance of the infrastructure these local grids were gradually connected to each other and put under public control.
If we could design our infrastructure systems all over again, what would be the best way to render them more dynamic, more suitable to meet changing future conditions? Basically, this is the central research question in this subprogram.
For more information, contact dr. ir. Paulien Herder.
