Different infrastructures, such as in the transport, telecommunications and energy sectors, have very distinct characteristics. The telecommunications sector, for instance, is changing very rapidly. It responds quickly to the ever-changing demands of modern society, and new telecom infrastructures can be introduced relatively easily. The energy sector, however, is much more inert. Networks of gas pipes and electricity cables are often many years old and difficult to update.
Despite these differences, these and other sectors have something in common: they all have to be able to respond to changes while maximising efficiency and minimising cost.
“The underlying concepts and theories relating to flexibility are often the same,” says Paulien Herder, sub-programme leader of Flexible Infrastructures. “This implies that researchers could benefit strongly from each other’s work. In practice, however, people are often preoccupied with their specific field of study.” To address this challenge, Flexible Infrastructures is planning on creating a new post-doc position, allowing one researcher to look into the commonalities of the programme’s different research projects and formulate a framework of overarching ideas on flexibility and strategies to deal with uncertainty.
Hopefully this ‘umbrella project’ will generate new insights and ideas, which in turn will help individual researchers in their own projects. “It is not just an academic exercise,” stresses Herder, “but a win-win situation. The theory on flexibility will be taken further, but researchers will benefit directly. They will learn how different infrastructures function under various circumstances, and how other researchers approach similar questions.”
Herder is expecting that the umbrella project will be particularly useful for researchers in the second round of the programme. “If people have improved access to existing knowledge from the start of their project, and can build on an elaborated framework, they won’t have to start from the ground. That would be a tremendous improvement.”
