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'Infrastructure' is generally ''a set of interconnected structural elements that provide the framework supporting an entire structure''. The term has diverse meanings in different fields, but is perhaps most widely understood to refer to roads, airports, and utilities. These various elements may collectively be termed civil infrastructure, municipal infrastructure, or simply public works, although they may be developed and operated as private-sector or government enterprises. In other applications, infrastructure may refer to information technology, informal and formal channels of communication, software development tools, political and social networks, beliefs held by members of particular groups. Still underlying these more general uses is the concept that infrastructure provides organizing structure and support for the system or organization it serves, whether it is a city, a nation, or a corporation. Economically infrastructure could be seen to be the structural elements of an economy which allow for production of goods and services without themselves being part of the production process. e.g. roads allows the transport of raw materials and finished products.
The word seems to have originated in 19th century France, and throughout the first half of the 20th century was used to refer primarily to military installations. The term came to prominence in the United States in the 1980s following publication of ''America in Ruins'' (Choate and Walter, 1981), which initiated a public-policy discussion of the nation’s “infrastructure crisis,” purported to be caused by decades of inadequate investment and poor maintenance of public works.
That public-policy discussion was hampered by lack of a precise definition for infrastructure. The U.S. National Research Council (NRC) committee cited Senator Stafford, who commented at hearings before the Subcommittee on Water Resources, Transportation, and Infrastructure; Committee on Environment and Public Works; that “probably the word infrastructure means different things to different people." The NRC panel then sought to rectify the situation by adopting the term "public works infrastructure", referring to "...both specific functional modes - highways, streets, roads, and bridges; mass transit; airports and airways; water supply and water resources; wastewater management; solid-waste treatment and disposal; electric power generation and transmission; telecommunications; and hazardous waste management--and the combined system these modal elements comprise. A comprehension of infrastructure spans not only these public works facilities, but also the operating procedures, management practices, and development policies that interact together with societal demand and the physical world to facilitate the transport of people and goods, provision of water for drinking and a variety of other uses, safe disposal of society's waste products, provision of energy where it is needed, and transmission of information within and between communities."^[1]
In subsequent years the word has grown in popularity and been applied with increasing generality to suggest the internal framework discernible in any technology system or business organization. The term “critical infrastructure” has been widely adopted to distinguish those infrastructure elements that, if significantly damaged or destroyed, would cause serious disruption of the dependent system or organization. Storm or earthquake damage leading to loss of certain transportation routes in a city (for example, bridges crossing a river), could make it impossible for people to evacuate and for emergency services to operate; these routes would be deemed critical infrastructure. Similarly, an on-line reservations system might be critical infrastructure for an airline.

Contents

Rural infrastructure

Spotting hidden infrastructure

See also

References

External links

Rural infrastructure

Rural infrastructure differs from urban infrastructure in the amount of public investment per unit of geographical area. In general, public investment in infrastructure tends to parallel the number of households in a geographical area. The funding of rural infrastructure is most often limited by the depth of the public revenue base in the area, which is often dependent on the presence or absence of industrial plants, other corporate employment nodes or community commerce. Although some publicly controlled assets critical to human survival exist in rural areas, utilities and transport tend to be much less extensive and thus less convenient or entirely unavailable to much of the general populace. Rural areas usually do not have extensive pipeline systems for distribution of potable water; inhabitants rely on nature's services for drinking, cooking and bathing water drawn from private wells or from streams, ponds and lakes. Private infrastructural capital such as dams, canals or irrigation ditches may be utilized for water diversion and supply. Rural societies seldom have community facilities for waste collection or treatment. Inhabitants must make their own arrangements for disposal of waste and rubbish; such private arrangements often produce conditions deleterious or dangerous to the local society, or even to neighboring societies. Because the necessary capital investment is lower, systems for distribution of electricity and communications are more common in rural areas than systems for distribution of water or collection of waste. Rural areas tend to rely on community emergency response teams, such as volunteer firefighting organizations, rather than funding more costly fire and rescue departments comprised of full-time paid employees. The number of law enforcement personnel and frequency of patrols in rural areas tends to reflect population densities, the presence of public facilities or commecial enterprises and the volume of traffic along the area's surface transportation routes.

Spotting hidden infrastructure

In the USA, underground lines are often marked by color. This is especially true when excavation is taking place at a site. The standard marking colors are red for electric power lines and lighting; yellow for gas, oil, steam, petroleum and gaseous materials; orange for communication, alarm or signal lines, cable or conduit; blue for water, irrigation, and slurry lines; and green for sewer and drain lines.^[2]

See also

★ 3D Infrastructure Business Intelligence

★ Airport infrastucture

★ Cost overrun

★ Critical Infrastructure Protection

★ Infrastructural power

★ Infrastructure Canada

★ Infrastructure of Cuba

★ Infrastructure bias

★ Infrastructure in London

★ Infrastructure for Resilient Internet Systems

★ Infrastructure and Energy Committee

★ Infrastructure Consortium for Africa

★ Infrastructure and Communities

★ Megaproject

★ Maritime infrastructure

★ Mission critical

★ Public works

★ Superstructure

References

1. (''Infrastructure for the 21st Century'', Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1987)
2. Consumer Circuit, June 2007. Published by AEP Ohio

External links

★ World Bank Infrastructure for Development

★ Next Generation Infrastructures international research programme