Looking Ahead to Maryland 2050: Living in Our Environment

Abstracts

Panel II:  Maryland in a Changing World

Infrastructure

Matthias Ruth, Director, Center for Integrative Environmental Research

Abstract
Infrastructure systems are often lumpy, their development and maintenance are costly, and once put in place, they are hard to change.  This holds for the grey structures, such as roads, water and sewer systems, or energy generation and supply infrastructure.  Additional complexities for development and maintenance arise from the interdependence of these systems, such as those between energy and water.  For example, electricity generation often requires adequate fresh water supply for cooling purposes.  During periods of low stream flow, electricity generation may be impaired.  Those may also be the periods in which demand for power is largest – for example, for cooling and air conditioning, or for water pumping and aeration in water treatment plants.  Other interdependencies are with “green infrastructures”, for example when urban forestry helps reduce summer time energy demand but increases likelihood of power interruption during ice and snow events.  The “soft infrastructures” – the institutions that govern the other systems as if they were largely separable – are equally interdependent and often hard to change. 

This presentation addresses current and likely future challenges to, and opportunities for infrastructure development, with special focus on the interdependencies of grey, green and soft infrastructure.  Since changing infrastructures is likely to be slow and expensive, anticipation of future technological, demographic, economic, and environmental conditions becomes key to effective infrastructure planning and management.  The case is made that, since these future conditions are highly uncertain and often full of surprise, a new mind set is necessary for planning and management, that distinguishes itself from the mechanistic, cause-effect approaches that characterize infrastructure management today.

Speaker information
Dr. Ruth holds the Roy F. Weston Chair in Natural Economics at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland and is the Founding Director of the Center for Integrative Environmental Research at the Division of Research, University of Maryland. He teaches - nationally and internationally - courses and seminars on microeconomics and policy analysis, ecological economics, industrial ecology and dynamic modeling at the undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. levels, and has also conducted short courses for decision makers in industry and policy.