Articles on critical infrastructure

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What new and innovative infrastructure is likely to emerge from the suburbs? Roger Keil

April 6, 2017

Why suburban tensions and inequality will drive infrastructure innovation

Pierre Filion, University of Waterloo and Roger Keil, York University, Canada

Suburban areas feel infrastructure stress most acutely. Having to deal with severe inadequacies, suburbs offer fertile ground for infrastructure experimentation and innovation.

The Snowy Mountain Scheme is an iconic example of postwar nation-building infrastructure. By the decade after its completion, the sell-offs were in full swing. Lukas Coch/AAP

April 5, 2017

Stumbling into the future: living with the legacy of the great infrastructure sell-off

Phillip O'Neill, Western Sydney University

Long-term privatisation contracts, most of them closed to scrutiny, lock urban infrastructure into 20th-century formats unsuited for a climate-threatened planet.

Politicised projects that steamroll proper process are giving transport planning a bad name. www.shutterstock.com

April 4, 2017

How do we restore the public’s faith in transport planning?

Crystal Legacy, RMIT University; Carey Curtis, Curtin University, and Jan Scheurer, Curtin University

Politicised transport projects that flout proper process lead to hostility between residents and governments, and give planners a bad name.

Aspiring ‘smart cities’ like Barcelona have worked to build their profile – it recently hosted the Smart City Expo World Congress – but Australia may benefit from not having rushed in. Ramon Costa/AAP

April 3, 2017

From Smart Cities 1.0 to 2.0: it’s not (only) about the tech

Sarah Barns, Western Sydney University; Donald McNeill, Western Sydney University; Ellie Cosgrave, UCL, and Michele Acuto, UCL

Australia has lagged behind some other countries in its investment in smart cities, but in retrospect that may not have been such a bad thing.

The 2016 storm that blacked out South Australia had everyone talking about a critical infrastructure failure. David Mariuz/AAP

April 2, 2017

What’s critical about critical infrastructure?

Wendy Steele, RMIT University; Karen Hussey, The University of Queensland, and Stephen Dovers, Australian National University

Critical infrastructure is our means of survival as an urban species. So, we must identify what is critical, for whom and how it might fail us.

Cyclone Oswald caused flooding that forced the evacuation of more than 100 patients from Bundaberg Hospital to Brisbane in January 2013. Dave Hunt/AAP

January 11, 2017

Hospitals feel the heat too from extreme weather and its health impacts

Martin Loosemore, UNSW and Anumitra Mirti Chand, UNSW

Most of our hospitals were not designed to cope with the health impacts of future extreme weather. And hospital infrastructure has not been adapted to secure health care during such events.

Is Labor right to say that public sector infrastructure investment has fallen by 20% under the current government? AAP/Dan Himbrechts

May 31, 2016

Election FactCheck: Has public infrastructure investment fallen 20% under the Coalition?

Marion Terrill, Grattan Institute and Owain Emslie, Grattan Institute

Labor says that public sector infrastructure investment has fallen 20% under the Abbott-Turnbull government. Is that right?

It’s become conventional wisdom that Australia has an infrastructure deficit – with remarkably little discussion of what that even means. AAP Image/Dave Hunt

April 27, 2016

Budget explainer: does Australia really have an infrastructure deficit?

Marion Terrill, Grattan Institute and Brendan Coates, Grattan Institute

How can we tell whether we have an infrastructure deficit? And if we do, how big is it?

January 13, 2016

The cyberattack on Ukraine’s power grid is a warning of what’s to come

Nilufer Tuptuk, UCL and Stephen Hailes, UCL

The cyberattack that brought down a city's power supply in Ukraine is a cautionary tale for what lies ahead.

As transport networks increasingly rely on technology, protecting the systems underpinning them is a growing priority around the world. Image sourced from Shutterstock.com

March 11, 2015

Protecting critical infrastructure in a world of infinite attacks

Zahir Tari, RMIT University and Carlos Queiroz, RMIT University

A security rethink is required for protecting critical infrastructure - and it relies on accepting not all attacks can be prevented.

Top contributors

Marion Terrill
Transport Program Director, Grattan Institute
Peter Newman
Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University
Martin Loosemore
Professor, Construction Management Program, Built Environment, UNSW
Wendy Steele
Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Planning, RMIT University
Crystal Legacy
Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, RMIT University
Karen Hussey
Deputy Director, Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland
Carey Curtis
Professor of City Planning and Transport, Curtin University
Donald McNeill
Professor of Urban and Cultural Geography, Western Sydney University
Michele Acuto
Professor of Diplomacy and Urban Theory, UCL
Sarah Barns
Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University
Phillip O'Neill
Director, Centre for Western Sydney, Western Sydney University
Brendan Coates
Fellow, Grattan Institute
Zahir Tari
Professor in Distributed Systems, School of Computer Science and IT, RMIT University
Carlos Queiroz
PhD, RMIT University
Ellie Cosgrave
Research Associate, UCL