9 Coupled Infrastructure Systems

Key Concepts

In this chapter we will:

• See how to combine systems concepts with the IAD framework
• Explore how different type of infrastructure (natural, human-made, soft and hard) are part of a general framework to study human-environment interactions

9.1 Introduction

In this chapter, we will discuss an extension of the IAD framework that includes some of the insights from systems science. Furthermore, it incorporates our long-term experience with studying current and historical irrigation systems around the world. We view irrigation systems as a model for many problems societies experience just as the fruit fly is used as a basic model in genetics. By this, we mean that studying collective action problems in irrigation systems will teach us a lot about solving collective action problems in many other societal contexts. We will expand on this in the next chapter. Moreover, we argue that many societal problems can be studied from a coupled infrastructure systems perspective.

In Chapter 2 we discussed different types of infrastructure such as hard infrastructure (human-made brick and mortar infrastructure), soft infrastructure (human-made “software” to use other types of infrastructure), natural infrastructure (hard infrastructure that is not man-made), human infrastructure (knowledge and skills) and social infrastructure (social relationships). In the next sections we discuss how those different types of infrastructure relate to and depend on each other.

9.2 Collective action and infrastructure

There are a number of collective action problems related to the creation, maintenance, and use of infrastructure. One key problem is the question of who is going to pay for the creation of the infrastructure or, put another way, how will the cost be shared? Farmers in rural Nepal may pay by providing labor to the construction and maintenance of the irrigation system. In many western societies we have governments that collect taxes and use the resulting revenue to pay professionals for the creation of infrastructure.

The regulations regarding who pays can lead to perverse effects. For example, in the U.S. the federal government pitches in to pay the majority of the costs for highways, while the local governments pay less than half the costs. As a consequence, local governments are often eager to increase the number of highways to promote economic development. The subsidizing of road expansion was instituted after World War II to improve transportation and accessibility and, indirectly, economic development. A consequence of this policy is that roads are cheap for users and this enhances the demand for using them. One reason for the low price for using roads is the relative lack of maintenance, which is paid for by local governments. So, local governments want to improve economic performance to send signals to voters to get re-elected, but forget that roads must be maintained. This activity may generate short term benefits, but generates a long-term burden for taxpayers. One way to generate more funds for road maintenance is through the “user pays principle” and to raise taxes on gasoline (an indirect way to charge drivers to use the roads). Of course, this is a politically challenging proposition for elected officials who cannot afford to be seen raising taxes. It also creates problems when the vehicle fleet is becoming more fuel efficient. Higher fuel efficiency means that road use can increase while the tax revenues to maintain the roads goes down. This is especially true of electric vehicles who do not pay for gasoline and thus do not pay a user fee. As the proportion of electric vehicles grows, governments will have to find other ways to finance maintenance than through gasoline taxes.

A second collective action problem for infrastructure is to define who gets access to its use. In many irrigation systems there is a natural asymmetry between the upstream and downstream users of the canal system. Farmers have to solve the collective action problem of how to deal with this asymmetry. They may create a rotation system to reduce the impact of asymmetry. When taxpayers contribute equally to the creation of the infrastructure, this does not mean that they all have access. Taxpayers contribute to higher education, but not everyone who pays taxes has access to the knowledge infrastructure that is created. There are criteria for students to be admitted. The reason that societies invest in higher education is that everyone benefits indirectly by having a highly educated population (such as physicians, engineers and lawyers).

We have taught in different countries and have experienced the impact of how higher education is organized. In many countries, such as European countries, higher education is subsidized. Admission criteria are more challenging than some other countries, such as the USA, where public universities cover only a very small percentage of their expenditures by tax money. Students in the USA pay high tuition to enjoy higher education. This impacts the way education is implemented. If education is subsidized, there is an incentive for universities to be selective about who enters and progresses through the educational programs. When students pay high tuition, students are clients, and there is an incentive to accommodate them to be successful in the program. In subsidized higher education, governmental criteria determine how money is spent and what educational programs may get more students. When students pay huge tuition fees, the expected income from getting degrees will drive which programs are popular. Both systems may, in theory, lead to similar outcomes in which people are educated for jobs that need higher education. However, we may expect that there are significant differences in how the benefits of higher education are distributed across different groups in society.

9.3 Coupled infrastructure systems

In this section, we present an extension of the IAD framework that includes some of the specific problems related to interacting infrastructures. The framework was developed by Anderies, Janssen, and Ostrom in the early 2000s to facilitate their study of irrigation systems. While the notion of infrastructures creating action arenas are implicit in the IAD framework, the details are not explicit. The intent of the framework was to make explicit how the different types of infrastructure discussed above come together to structure the “action arena” and, more broadly, networks of action arenas that constitute real-world systems in which humans interact with shared built and natural infrastructures. To introduce the framework, we will focus first on a shared resource that is used by a number of resource users. This has been the canonical view for many of our small communities who interact with their resources. However, this raises the question of who creates the rules of how the shared resource will be used.

In this framework, we explicitly include two levels of action arenas, namely the operational level and the collective choice level. The third component of the framework consists of the public infrastructure providers, who are the ones who create the rules for the resource users. In small communities all resource users might come together on a regular basis in the evening to discuss the challenges in governing their shared resource. There might be a chair, a treasurer, and some other roles within the group of public infrastructure providers, but they are all resource users and thus have a stake in creating rules to improve the performance of using the shared resource.

In larger systems, individuals represent other resource users, typically in committees that deal with provisioning of the public infrastructure. These representatives are often selected through a collective choice arrangement, such as elections. Decisions by the committee about what types and how much public infrastructure is provided are also made using agreed-upon collective choice arrangements (e.g., Robert’s Rules of Order). This could be the state forestry committee that makes decisions on how to cope (i.e., how to allocate resources) with invasive species and who set rules on property tax benefits for landowners who plant new trees. The general assembly of the United Nations is a more extreme example where each member, a nation, is represented by an ambassador in making policies at the international level.

In studies where the Coupled Infrastructure System framework has been used, a common finding is that the link between resource users (mainly human and social infrastructures) and public infrastructure providers (mainly human, social, and soft human-made infrastructures) is a critical one. The bigger the distance, the less the practical knowledge (a particular type of human infrastructure) from resource users is included in creating institutional arrangements. A lack of practical knowledge may lead to policies that do not fit the reality that resource users experience and therefore policies may not be effective. On the other hand, local communities may not have the specialized knowledge (a type of human infrastructure) needed to solve certain problems on their own, and therefore creating institutional arrangements where representatives of many localities are involved can be beneficial.

The fourth component of the framework is the public infrastructure which includes mainly hard and soft human-made infrastructures. The public infrastructure providers may have decided on new institutional arrangements, but they may need a bureaucratic apparatus to implement and enforce those rules. Tax collectors, property inspectors, and guards all mobilize essential human infrastructure to implement the soft infrastructure of various types of coupled infrastructure systems. Canals, pipes, bridges, and satellites are part of the hard infrastructure of various types of coupled infrastructure systems.

The infrastructure could influence the resource directly, for example by improving the capacity of a landscape to capture water, or monitoring the state of the forest by remote sensing. The infrastructure can also interact directly with resource users, namely by assigning allowable actions (licensing), by monitoring the actions of resource users relative to allowable actions, or by providing information to users such as weather forecasts.

The framework (Figure 9.1) distinguishes four components, namely the shared resource system (natural infrastructure), resource users, public infrastructure providers and the public infrastructure. We can integrate this with the IAD framework such that the interaction between the four components constitutes a set of action arenas at the operational (resource users) and collective choice (public infrastructure providers) level. The external context defines the biophysical conditions of the shared resource system and the public infrastructure, the attributes of and the rules in use among the resource users, and the public infrastructure providers.

On short time scales, the interactions of the four components lead to outcomes. We are especially interested in how the interaction between resource users and public infrastructure providers leads to infrastructure that facilitates productive outcomes. On longer time scales, the interactions of the four components generate feedbacks that generate persistent patterns over time, for example, the inter- and intra-generationally fair use of shared natural infrastructures like the oceans and climate systems, i.e. features that underlie sustainable societies. Thus, we are also especially interested in the robustness of coupled infrastructure systems, building on the concepts introduced in the previous part of the book.

Inequality is an important component of the functioning of coupled infrastructure systems. We know from historical research and experimental studies that inequality may have negative consequences for the ability of groups and societies to solve collective action problems. For example, where do we place the nuclear power station, or which economic sectors will have to reduce their water use to avoid the major consequences of a drought? If we have to reduce our carbon footprint will the average Joe have to forgo their holidays (carbon emissions from travel) while rich households can buy additional carbon emission rights? What happens if rich neighborhoods get off the grid by powering their houses with solar energy and driving around in Teslas? Those who do not go off the grid will now have less capacity to maintain an already aging infrastructure.

What if an elite group in society is better represented in the category of public infrastructure providers compared to a lower income group? How will this affect the kind of policies that are developed, what types of public infrastructure are produced (i.e., defense versus health care and education or environmental protection) and how the fairness of those infrastructures are perceived?

9.4 Use action arenas to study coupled infrastructure systems

The creation of the coupled infrastructure systems framework does not mean we abandon the IAD framework. On the contrary we argue that the IAD framework, and the action arenas in particular, are especially suitable useful to study coupled infrastructure systems.  As mentioned in the previous section, there are questions on how participants make their decisions to invest in infrastructure and solve collective action problems. How to create incentive structures for elected officials (as public infrastructure providers) to facilitate the creation and maintenance of public infrastructure that leads to beneficial outcomes for the resource users? In other words, how to avoid rent seeking and corruption which is tempting since public infrastructure providers are often in a position of specific information and power in decision making and frequently out-of-office the time potential design flaws of public infrastructure can be observed. The answer depends on the specific case, but it could help to have public infrastructure providers who have a stake in the success of the outcome (members of the community vs outsiders), have transparency broad participation in the design and implementation, and design indicators measuring progress and process.

Another type of action situation is the appropriation of resource users of the resource. The action situation may help to identify how actions of the participants are monitored, whether monitors have an incentive to police strictly but compassionately, and whether resource users and monitors can monitor accurately the state of the resource. Will capacity building be needed (investments in human and social infrastructure)?

Basically, the coupled infrastructure systems framework is a more dynamic perspective of the IAD framework with multiple actions arenas. We have seen students after the introduction of infrastructure perspectives separate it from the IAD framework, but that is not the intension. Our perspective of infrastructure is very much about collective action and human decision making, not bricks and mortar. The examples we discuss in the coming chapters may hopefully contribute to immerse the different frameworks.

9.5 Robustness of coupled infrastructure systems

Coupled infrastructure systems experience many types of disturbances. For example, weather, insect outbreaks, wildfires, and earthquakes can impact the shared resource system as well as the hard public infrastructure. External changes imposed by higher levels of governance can impact the soft public infrastructure, resources users, and public infrastructure providers as well as cause changes in prices of inputs and outputs, infectious diseases and technological innovations. “Robustness” refers to the capacity of a particular coupled infrastructure system to cope with such shocks and continue to maintain persistent structures and patterns of organization that deliver benefit streams over time.

If a coupled infrastructure system is to be robust, a disturbance should not fundamentally disrupt the functionality of the system and the system should regain its basic performance relatively quickly. Earthquakes can cause major damage. In the early months of 2010 there were two major earthquakes. A magnitude 7.0 earthquake destroyed the hard and soft infrastructure of Haiti on January 12, 2010. Years after the earthquake many people still live in camps, some with only basic sanitation. The total death toll is not known but is believed to be around 200,000. In contrast, on February 27, 2010, Chile experienced an earthquake with magnitude 8.8, which is much stronger than what Haiti experienced. Yet the total number of fatalities was 497, mainly due to a tsunami caused by the quake. A year after the earthquake, most of the damage, including damage to roads and bridges, was repaired.

What might explain the difference in responses to the earthquakes in the different countries? First, note that Chile has very strict building guidelines to improve the ability of buildings to cope with earthquakes (i.e., to be robust to earthquakes). Since there are so many earthquakes in Chile, one has to build with the right materials and construction design. There is a general awareness across the population about the danger of earthquakes, and individuals, families, and organizations regularly practice what to do when there is a major earthquake, that is, they have invested in knowledge and emergency response protocols to increase robustness (what kind of infrastructure is this?). In the less economically developed Haiti, earthquakes are less frequent than in Chile. Thus, there is much less experience with major earthquake disasters. Because of this lack of experience (an element of human capital) there was no attention or resources allocated to mitigate the effects of potential earthquakes.

The weak soft infrastructure hindered the ability of Haiti’s government to implement effective disaster risk-reduction measures which reduced the robustness of the hard infrastructure to earthquakes.

Chile has a more robust coupled infrastructure system to cope with earthquakes compared to Haiti. Due to the frequency of earthquakes and the occurrence of the largest magnitude earthquake ever measured (9.5) in 1960, the Chilean government created strict building guidelines to reduce the impact of future earthquakes. Since building robustness has a cost, one has to define priorities to guide how resources are allocated. It is not uncommon that after a major disaster, new regulations are put into place to reduce the impact of rare, major shocks, whether they are earthquakes, floods, or forest fires. Regardless how much and in what capacities governments invest, coupled infrastructure systems cannot be robust to every possible shock. Scholars who study these systems thus speak about systems being “robust yet fragile.” A system can be designed to be robust to one type of shock but can, as a consequence, become vulnerable to other types of shocks. The simplest example is the sea wall that protects a community from annual storm surges but makes it more vulnerable to rare surges that happen once a century. At a more basic level, the resources used to build the sea wall cannot be used to invest resources in becoming robust to another type of shock. These examples illustrate that the “robust yet fragile” (recall this feature of feedback control systems discussed in Chapter 8) nature of coupled infrastructure systems play out in multiple ways.

In recent years the U.S. has experienced major damage due to hurricanes such as hurricane Katrina (New Orleans), hurricane Sandy (New York City), hurricane Ian (Florida). Those hurricanes demonstrated the vulnerabilities of coupled infrastructures, especially due to flooding. Those vulnerabilities were well known in the scientific and engineering communities, but were not considered important enough for governments to act on. As mentioned before, being robust to specific threats requires priority setting.

With the anticipated climatic change over the next century, we expect more frequent and/or more intense hurricanes. As a result, vulnerable urban areas are now rethinking what it means to be robust. Does this require a different way to produce and distribute clean water, energy, and information? Do we continue to invest in cities which are in vulnerable areas, especially those impacted by the rise in sea level, such as New York City? Would it be best to abandon the types of coastal natural infrastructures that support iconic cities and stage a slow, directed resettlement? How many resources should be spent by all taxpayers to protect a small proportion of the population that lives near vulnerable coastal areas? These questions highlight the challenging choices and trade-offs public infrastructure providers must make as they allocate scarce resources to develop and maintain different types of infrastructure that constitute the coupled infrastructure systems upon which we all critically depend for almost all aspects of our welfare.

Another example of a consequence of lack of infrastructure investments is the power crisis in February 2021 in Texas. About 5 million people lost their power for several days while there was a major winter storm. This led to hundreds of people dying due to lack of health and other services that need power. The reason for the power outage was the lack of winterizing of power sources. The vulnerability of the Texas energy system to winter storms was known, and warned for by Federal agencies, but no investment in preparedness was made. The power crises cost about 200 $ billion. It is easy to blame the Texas government and energy companies after the event, but they have to make decisions about what to invest in for many types of potential threats. Whatever investments will be made to improvements of the robustness of the Texas power system, there will always be vulnerabilities.

9.6 Common features of infrastructure systems

When using infrastructure concepts for ecological, social and human attributes of systems, can we apply features we may associate with physical infrastructure to other types of infrastructure? We explore this question in this section. For physical infrastructure, one needs to construct the actual brick and mortar structures and, after completion, repair wear and tear to maintain the productivity of the infrastructure. Typically, infrastructure has a particular flow capacity, how many cars can cross the bridge per hour, how much water can flow through drainage pipes, how many bytes can flow down a cable, etc. We may distinguish between a base load, the common load during the normal operations of a system, and a maximum load, the maximum demand that the infrastructure can support. Using more than the base and peak load could lead to extra stress to the system, potentially leading to burst pipe, collapsing bridges and cracking surfaces of roads.

In the design of infrastructure, one needs to consider what the capacity constraints are, which impact what kind of robustness will be available. We can apply this to other types of infrastructure (Table 9.1). Soft infrastructure can be overrun with too many rules and regulations that do not fit the system. Creating too many rules, too much bureaucratic processes, may lead an organization, whether it is a community organization or a federal government to a stand still. When actors in action situations have to comply with the soft infrastructure, this requires time, and especially if those rules are not well understood or accepted, this may lead to mistakes and a lack of compliance.

With natural infrastructure, humans may make adjustments to improve the flow of resources. This may require continuous maintenance by mowing, trimming, cleaning up of the natural infrastructure. An agricultural field may increase productivity by using tilling, pesticides and artificial fertilizers, but too many crops will reduce the natural productivity of the system. Natural regeneration is needed and taking into account the stress put on the system.

Same with human infrastructure. As you are creating skills in human infrastructure to study coupled infrastructure systems, one may need to use it and apply the skills, in order to maintain those skills. Learning too many concepts at once may reduce retention of knowledge. People differ in their ability and practices to study, but in general cranking all your knowledge and skills into your brain and muscles just before an exam, performance or race might lead to bad outcomes (overworked, overtrained).

With social networks the focus is on connections. Each connection added to your social network leads to additional time to maintain connections. Although people may have hundreds of friends on Facebook, in practice people will spend their quality time to a small fraction of those connections. Not having the time to keep up with maintaining those connections could lead to distrust and a lack of reciprocity, when you need it.

Table 9.1: Applying infrastructure terminology across the types of infrastructure.

9.7 Critical reflections

Infrastructure may be taken for granted, but it is critical to generate the services and resources we need for our daily lives. There are different ways we can organize the creation and maintenance of infrastructure, and the institutional arrangements (soft infrastructure) that affect the robustness of coupled infrastructure systems.

9.8 Make yourself think

1. Who paid for the creation and maintenance of roads you use to get to campus?
2. How is the electricity generated that you use at home?
3. Maintenance of roads is paid largely from gasoline tax. What are the consequences of more energy efficient and even electric vehicles for the continued maintenance of the road infrastructure?

9.9  References

Anderies, J., Janssen, M.A., & Ostrom, E. (2004). A framework to analyze the robustness of social-ecological systems from an institutional perspective. Ecology and Society, 9(1), 18.

Anderies, J. M., Janssen, M. A., & Schlager, E. (2016). Institutions and the performance of coupled infrastructure systems. International Journal of the Commons, 10(2), 495–516. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.651

LePatner, B. B. (2010). Too Big to Fall: America’s Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward. UPNE.

Stiglitz, J. (2012). The Price of Inequality. Penguin UK.