Building Up Sustainable Infrastructure

Our population is growing fast. The world’s population is at about 7.9 billion, according to the United Nations, but that number is expected to increase to 8.5 billion by 2030 and then 9.7 billion by 2050. While growth rates will vary by regions, it will still be roughly two billion extra people on the planet in the next couple of decades. What impact will this have on our infrastructure? And better yet how are we going to keep up with this surge when our buildings and bridges are already crumbling to the ground at an alarming rate?
 
This is a topic Steve Cockerell, industry marketing director, transportation, Bentley Systems, addressed at the EFCG Conference earlier this summer.
 
“You’ve got to ask yourselves, where are they going to live? Well in the UN’s eyes the future of the world’s population is most definitely urban,” he says. “Today around 55% of the world’s population live in urban areas already. But by the middle of the century, that number’s going to go up to 68%. In America, the figure is already 80%, and I think this is going to place a huge, additional strain in the future on our existing infrastructure assets.”
 
This presents a few challenges. For one, we need to build the cities and infrastructure to be able to meet the needs of these extra people. At the same time, we need to do it in a way that is sustainable. We know transportation is a big contributor of carbon emissions, with road vehicles accounting for three quarters of the emissions from transport and with freight handling the remainder, according to Cockerell. So perhaps then the solution for both lies with our infrastructure.
 
We see governments across the globe beginning to recognize all of this and do something about it. In January, in the United Kingdom, the government announced the equivalent of a billion dollars of investment in rail, partly to build back after the pandemic but also to boost the economy, create jobs, and move to a more environmentally sustainable transit option, according to Cockerell.
 
In June, here in the United States, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation announced grants to advance the current administration’s priorities of rebuilding America’s infrastructure and creating jobs by funding highway and rail projects of regional and national economic significance that position America to “win the 21st century.” Here is what I like: many of the projects were rated on the extent that they applied innovative technology and whether they could deliver projects in a cost-effective manner.
 
Countries recognize that in order to build these sustainable infrastructure systems of the future, it will require optimized design and advanced digital technologies across the entire lifecycle of the asset—and many are moving in that very direction. For example, the Malaysia government is accelerating project delivering and optimizing asset performance on the Pan Borneo highway using digital twin technology, enabled by Bentley Systems. As another example, the New York DOT is using digital technology to advance project delivery.
 
Meanwhile down in Australia, SNC Lavalin is using digital twins to help rail and transit owners reopen and recover from the effects of the pandemic. Cockerell says it is using pedestrian simulation to look at different scenarios and the behavior of people under new COVID safe rules. Gothenburg, Sweden, meanwhile, is using the digital twin to visualize and plan a new rail tunnel under the central District. The BIM (building information modeling) data and information on these new stations allows them to adjust what they’re seeing and enable those smarter and better decisions.
 
In addition to using technology during construction, many countries are also using it for long-term infrastructure maintenance. For instance, in Singapore, SMRT trains began operating back in 1987 and as of 2019 had four lines that carried about two million passengers. Proactive maintenance used to take many hours a day. With digital twin, this has been automated and cut to about 30 minutes.
 
Quite simply, technology is helping to reimagine the future of our infrastructure and accommodate more people safely. Will this be enough to support our growing population in a way that is sustainable for both future and current generations? I am not so sure, but we are at least headed in the right direction.