International Centre for Infrastructure Futures (ICIF)

与世界上许多地方相比，英国近几十年来在基础设施方面的投资不足。它现在面临着许多挑战，需要升级基础设施，以适应它在21世纪剩下的时间里将面临的社会、经济和环境挑战。一个关键的挑战涉及考虑到一个部门的基础设施系统越来越依赖于其他部门的其他基础设施系统的运作方式。这些相互依赖性意味着一个系统中的故障可能导致其他系统中的后续故障。例如，供水系统的故障可能会中断电力供应，从而扰乱通信，从而影响运输，从而使工程师无法解决供水基础设施的原始问题。这些问题现在造成了重大的经济和社会代价。不幸的是，它们很难管理，因为英国的基础设施系统历来都是围绕着单个基础设施部门建造的，目前也是围绕着这些部门运营和管理的。由于许多私有化的公用事业公司专注于运营基础设施资产，他们在生产新资产或理解这些相互依赖关系方面的经验有限。许多旧的国家研发实验室已经关闭，英国缺乏采购和交付英国所需的现代基础设施的能力。一方面，这使得创新具有风险。另一方面，它为公司创造了重要的商业机会，可以提高他们对基础设施相互依赖性的理解，并加快他们如何开发和测试他们的新商业模式。这种学习是困难的，因为基础设施创新是在复杂的企业网络中进行的，而不是在单个企业中进行的，并且通常必须处理广泛的利益相关者、监管机构、客户、用户和供应商。目前，英国缺乏一个共享的学习环境，让这些不同的参与者能够聚集在一起，探索不同选择的优缺点。这使得创新更加困难和昂贵，因为企业被迫“边做边学”，并且很难在开始昂贵的开发项目之前预测其活动所受到的技术、经济、法律和社会限制。中心将创造一个共享的、便利的学习环境，使社会科学家、工程师、实业家、决策者和其他利益相关者能够共同研究和学习，了解如何更好地利用基础设施系统日益相互依存所带来的技术和市场机会。该中心将专注于创新商业模式的开发和实施，旨在支持希望在国际市场上开拓创新的英国公司。该中心将就基础设施与用户的相互依存关系进行广泛的研究活动，以便及早发现和以较低的费用解决问题。由于基础设施创新改变了风险和回报的社会分配，公众需要参与决策，以确保商业模式和监管形式在社会上是健全的。因此，该中心的主要重点是利用其研究来促进有关英国基础设施未来的更广泛的全国性辩论，以及它如何为一个更可持续、经济活力和公平的社会做出贡献。该中心活动的受益者包括现有的公用事业企业、希望进入基础设施部门的企业家、监管机构、政府，也许最重要的是，我们的社区将从更高效、更不脆弱的基础设施服务中受益。

Compared to many parts of the world, the UK has under-invested in its infrastructure in recent decades. It now faces many challenges in upgrading its infrastructure so that it is appropriate for the social, economic and environmental challenges it will face in the remainder of the 21st century. A key challenge involves taking into account the ways in which infrastructure systems in one sector increasingly rely on other infrastructure systems in other sectors in order to operate. These interdependencies mean failures in one system can cause follow-on failures in other systems. For example, failures in the water system might knock out electricity supplies, which disrupt communications, and therefore transportation, which prevent engineers getting to the original problem in the water infrastructure. These problems now generate major economic and social costs. Unfortunately they are difficult to manage because the UK infrastructure system has historically been built, and is currently operated and managed, around individual infrastructure sectors. Because many privatised utilities have focused on operating infrastructure assets, they have limited experience in producing new ones or of understanding these interdependencies. Many of the old national R&D laboratories have been shut down and there is a lack of capability in the UK to procure and deliver the modern infrastructure the UK requires. On the one hand, this makes innovation risky. On the other hand, it creates significant commercial opportunities for firms that can improve their understanding of infrastructure interdependencies and speed up how they develop and test their new business models. This learning is difficult because infrastructure innovation is undertaken in complex networks of firms, rather than in an individual firm, and typically has to address a wide range of stakeholders, regulators, customers, users and suppliers. Currently, the UK lacks a shared learning environment where these different actors can come together and explore the strengths and weaknesses of different options. This makes innovation more difficult and costly, as firms are forced to 'learn by doing' and find it difficult to anticipate technical, economic, legal and societal constraints on their activity before they embark on costly development projects.The Centre will create a shared, facilitated learning environment in which social scientists, engineers, industrialists, policy makers and other stakeholders can research and learn together to understand how better to exploit the technical and market opportunities that emerge from the increased interdependence of infrastructure systems. The Centre will focus on the development and implementation of innovative business models and aims to support UK firms wishing to exploit them in international markets. The Centre will undertake a wide range of research activities on infrastructure interdependencies with users, which will allow problems to be discovered and addressed earlier and at lower cost. Because infrastructure innovations alter the social distribution of risks and rewards, the public needs to be involved in decision making to ensure business models and forms of regulation are socially robust. As a consequence, the Centre has a major focus on using its research to catalyse a broader national debate about the future of the UK's infrastructure, and how it might contribute towards a more sustainable, economically vibrant, and fair society.Beneficiaries from the Centre's activities include existing utility businesses, entrepreneurs wishing to enter the infrastructure sector, regulators, government and, perhaps most importantly, our communities who will benefit from more efficient and less vulnerable infrastructure based services.