Smart infrastructure is the sum of all the possible value adding digital enhancements to infrastructure.
As digital enhancements are more cost-effective than traditional physical enhancements, the core value proposition is that smart infrastructure delivers better outcomes for the ultimate customers: fare- bill- and taxpayers and voters.
At the root, this added value comes from:
Improving decisions – enabling ‘better decisions, faster and cheaper.'
Improving intelligence – providing better information to users and operators.
Empowering users – making consumers part of the infrastructure system, able to add value through their actions, and benefit or be rewarded for doing so.
Harnessing the power of innovation – opening the world of infrastructure to the world of consumer innovation, bringing much enhanced agility in a fast changing world.
In the face of ongoing investment constraint, smart infrastructure offers better whole-life value for the customer and society; in other words, ‘increased outcome per pound’.
The rise of smart infrastructure will disrupt asset delivery, operation and management. Infrastructure use patterns are likely to change. Our working patterns and the skills we need will have to be reassessed, again and again.
Smart infrastructure is already transforming our industry. The question for all of us is: how fast can we change?