Innovation for Sustainability and Responsiveness in Infrastructure

Dear Colleagues,

Infrastructure (transport, energy, water, waste, and telecommunications) systems provide critical services to industry, commerce, and society, allowing humans to flourish. But infrastructure is neither sustainable nor is it responsive to quickly changing contexts, which are increasingly the norm in our globally-connected world.

There are opportunities on multiple fronts.

It is well recognized that the rate of adoption rate of ever more sophisticated Industry 4.0 technologies in infrastructure systems is slow. Technologies for detection, monitoring, actuation, and the provision of robust insight into the environmental costs of infrastructure operation in general are simply not being deployed quickly enough, exacerbating the ecological crisis.

We also know the range of human capabilities required to achieve resilient systems, maintain their robustness in the face of hazards, and also to recover appropriately, but it is unclear if these capabilities are sufficiently responsive.

Timing is vital. Responsiveness enables right-time (not necessary real-time) controllable changeability for autonomous and human-in-the-loop (HIL) decision-making in response to hazards, vulnerabilities, and risks. Responsive sustainability is a regime of timely and controllable interventions that improve sustainable outcomes (e.g., reduction of air pollution) and prevent ecological harm (e.g., loss of bio-diversity).

Authors from engineering, computer science, construction, and infrastructure disciplines who are passionate about sustainability are invited to consider the following topics:

• The role of Industry 4.0 to measure infrastructure sustainability and responsiveness
• Innovative, bio-inspired mechanisms for responsiveness
• Responsiveness capabilities (as opposed to resilience capabilities)
• Assessing infrastructure assets and systems for responsive sustainability
• Measuring the effects of responsive sustainability on public health
• Identifying trade-offs between responsiveness and sustainability
• Examining how a responsive sustainability lens creates new knowledge
• Considering roadmaps for the transition toward responsive sustainability
• Effects of longer-lived infrastructure on responsive sustainability
• Impact of responsive digital twins and/or sensing/actuation technologies on sustainability
• Responsive sustainability at different temporal and spatial scales
• Targeting of responsive sustainability to different infrastructure components, such as systems, sub-systems, components, links, whole systems of systems
• Consequences of storage on responsive sustainability
• Confidence, trust, and ethics of responsive sustainability
• Legislative and regulatory barriers to responsive sustainability 
• Responsive sustainability for single and multi-hazards/vulnerabilities/risks

Prof. Dr. Liz Varga
Guest Editor

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• sustainable responsiveness
• infrastructure
• Industry 4.0
• digital
• capabilities
• resilience
• public health