Exploring Vulnerability and Interdependency of UK Infrastructure Using Key-Linkages Analysis (original) (raw)
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It has been argued the UK has experienced significant underinvestment in critical infrastructure over the last two decades. This in turn has resulted in infrastructure that is less capable of assisting the UK economy to grow. This article seeks to undertake an in-depth analysis of the inter-linkages and economic contributions from infrastructure within the UK. It explores the relationship between nine infrastructure sectors and how these sectors contribute to the rest of the UK economy using keylinkage analysis. Each infrastructure sector is shown to be unique in the way it interacts with other economic sectors and in the form of contribution it makes to the economy overall. Infrastructure is found to be a necessary and important part of economic development. The analysis finds that over the last 23 years there has been a decline in the relative economic contribution from infrastructure to UK GVA. Only two infrastructure sectors increased their relative contribution to GVA since 1992. These were the water transport sector and sewerage and sanitary services sector. Railway transport and gas distribution have had the largest relative decline in contribution towards UK GVA with relative contributions decreasing by over 50 % since 1992. The three most important infrastructure sectors contributing to UK GDP are land transport, electricity production and distribution and telecommunications respectively.
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Infrastructure investment has long been held as an accelerator or a driver of the economy. Internationally, the UK ranks poorly with the performance of infrastructure and ranks in the lower percentile for both infrastructure investment and GDP growth rate amongst comparative nations. Faced with the uncertainty of Brexit and the likely negative economic impact this will bring, infrastructure investment may be used to strengthen the UK economy. This study aims to examine how infrastructure funding impacts economic growth and how best the UK can maximize this potential by building on existing work.The research method is based on interviews carried out with respondents involved in infrastructure operating across various sectors. The findings show that investment in infrastructure is vital in the UK as it stimulates economic growth through employment creation due to factor productivity. However, it is critical for investment to be directed to regional opportunity areas with the potential...
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The interdependencies within and between infrastructure systems can produce benefits and risks. The perception and value of these relationships can vary significantly depending on the viewpoint of the actors within the system. The current methods for describing these relationships do not necessarily account for these different perspectives, and tend to focus on reducing the risks and vulnerabilities associated with interdependency. By taking a holistic, multi-stakeholder approach of the infrastructure system it is possible to also identify the proactive opportunities for improving efficiency, effectiveness and resilience that can emerge from the relationships. A taxonomy is presented which allows for the characterisation of infrastructure relationships in multiple dimensions, with particular focus on identifying opportunities in a way that is therefore complementary to current methods. An application of this taxonomy to the identification of potentially beneficial relationships within the UK infrastructure system is described.
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There have been many calls for a more strategic, long-term approach to national infrastructure in the UK and elsewhere around the world. Whilst appealing in principle, in practice developing a national infrastructure strategy brings major challenges of complexity and uncertainty. The UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium (ITRC) has set out a systematic methodology for long term analysis of the performance of national infrastructure systems, which deals with each infrastructure sector (energy, transport, digital communications, water supply, waste water, flood protection and solid waste) in a consistent framework and calculates the implications of interdependencies between infrastructure sectors. The methodology is supported with the world's first infrastructure system of systems model (NISMOD), which has been developed for long term decision analysis in interdependent infrastructure systems. NISMOD has been applied to analyse the national infrastructure strategy that has been developed in the National Needs Assessment led by ICE President Sir John Armitt.
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National infrastructure systems (energy, transport, digital communications, water, and waste) provide essential services to society. Although for the most part these systems developed in a piecemeal way, they are now an integrated and highly interdependent "system of systems." However, understanding the long-term performance trajectory of national infrastructure has proved to be very difficult because of the complexity of these systems (in physical and institutional terms) and because there is little tradition of thinking cross-sectorally about infrastructure system performance. Here, a methodology is proposed for analyzing national multisectoral infrastructure systems performance in the context of uncertain futures, incorporating interdependencies in demand across sectors. Three contrasting strategies are considered for infrastructure provision (capacity intensive, capacity constrained, and decentralized) and multiattribute performance metrics are analyzed in the context of low, medium, and high demographic and economic growth scenarios. The approach is illustrated using Great Britain and provides the basis for the development and testing of long-term strategies for national infrastructure provision. It is especially applicable to mature industrial economics with a large stock of existing infrastructure and challenges of future infrastructure provision.
Public infrastructure: definition, classification and measurement issues
Beginning from the end of the 1980s many studies analysing the relation between infrastructures endowment and economic development have been realised. A general consensus is achieved around the idea that basic infrastructure facilities are important features related to economic performance, although both magnitude and causality direction are debated. A peculiar feature of these studies is that, across them, different empirical and theoretical entities are referred to infrastructure. Although the vast body of literature on infrastructures economic impact have been largely reviewed less attention have been paid to the term infrastructure per se. This article, aiming to provide a helpful instrument to critically interpret the existing literature, zooms in on infrastructure definition and then reviews different categories of infrastructures utilised in literature, namely: personal, institutional, material, immaterial, economic, social, core and not-core, basic and complementary, network, nucleus, and territory infrastructures. The final part deals with problems related to infrastructures measurement describing some financial-based measures and physical-based measures highlighting that both measures -due to economic and strictly computational problems -present pitfalls so that, in turn, both types of measures have critical aspects to be considered when interpreting results concerning infrastructures.
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Infrastructure investment, especially in South Africa, is currently at the forefront of policy and public debate. But the term 'infrastructure' has a variety of definitions and interpretations; the reason for the various definitions is related to infrastructure's various impacts and incidence. Three levels of infrastructure are identified: local, national and transnational. Infrastructure at all three levels are subject to certain market failures which require some form of government intervention. Furthermore, theory postulates a number of benefits from infrastructure, both on economic growth and equity. Both the quantity (access to infrastructure) and quality (reliability of infrastructure or accompanying services) are important. Finally, empirical analysis tests whether these theoretical benefits are indeed realised. However, it seems as though infrastructure empirics are subject to a number of serious limitations. JEL Classification: H54, L90L98, N77, O55