Infrastructure is being reshaped by fast-moving technology, climate pressures, resource limits, and growing demand. Ali Jadbabaie, JR East Professor and head of the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, argues that meeting those demands will require a fresh approach to how infrastructure is designed, financed, built, and operated.
More needs, tighter resource limits
Infrastructure has changed with each major technological shift. Civil engineering in the 18th century focused on dams, bridges, and canals; industrialization in the 19th century brought railways and sewage systems. The 20th century expanded the scale to buildings, highways, tunnels, metro systems, megacities, and skyscrapers.
Today, the definition extends beyond roads, water systems, and power grids. Semiconductor manufacturing plants, data centers, cellphone towers, and high-speed internet infrastructure are also critical parts of the systems people depend on.
What makes the current moment different, Jadbabaie says, is the speed and overlap of the pressures. Climate change and resource constraints are challenging established approaches, while geopolitical instability exposes weaknesses in supply chains. At the same time, economic growth in the developing world is increasing demand for infrastructure.
According to models cited in the interview, by 2028 the median human inhabitant of the planet will live off $10 a day. As more people move out of abject poverty, demand for infrastructure will rise. Repeating a resource-intensive model would require more water, energy, and materials than are available, while producing more carbon. The challenge is to provide more infrastructure while consuming less.
Digital tools bring opportunity and risk
Digital transformation and AI could help make infrastructure decisions more efficient. Faster, cheaper sensing and broader access to data can improve how systems are monitored and controlled. AI may also let engineers explore more design possibilities in less time and at lower cost.
Those benefits are still taking shape. Jadbabaie says the outcome is not yet determined; what AI means for infrastructure will depend on the choices made as it enters the physical world and the engineering process.
Digital connectivity also makes infrastructure systems more dependent on one another. A power outage can interrupt water and gas services, internet access, and transportation. A communications failure can affect many other services. Disruptions to supply chains during Covid affected energy networks, critical materials, and manufacturing, while geopolitical conflicts can unsettle oil and energy markets and spread disruption across the global economy.
Interconnection can improve efficiency, but it can also increase systemic risk. When connected systems fail, the consequences can extend well beyond one service. That makes it important to understand how failures can travel through infrastructure networks, as well as how to manage the systems in ordinary conditions.
Infrastructure decisions span a whole value chain
Building infrastructure is only one part of the work. Projects also require financing and long-term operation, and their design needs to account for the people who will use them and what those users need and prefer.
That makes infrastructure a social, technical, and economic undertaking. As systems grow more complex, decisions become harder. Large projects are capital-intensive, lower-margin than many other industries, and take a long time, conditions that have historically made the industry conservative.
AI and digital transformation may offer a new way forward, but the approach has not yet been fully defined. Jadbabaie’s point is that technology alone cannot settle the questions: choices about design, funding, construction, and operation are connected, and involve many disciplines and stakeholders.
Why collaboration matters
MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering co-founded the World Infrastructure Forum with the World Bank Group, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and University of Texas at Austin. The forum is intended to bring together academia, industry, governments, and financial institutions for an ongoing dialogue about infrastructure across its value chain.
That conversation matters because future needs are not concentrated only in countries with mature infrastructure. Those countries still need modernization and new investment, but much of the world's population growth and much of the infrastructure to be built over the coming decades will be in countries where systems are still developing.
The decisions made now will shape whether expanding infrastructure can meet human needs while reducing pressure on water, energy, materials, and the climate. Jadbabaie is scheduled to join experts in Madrid on Oct. 28 at the World Infrastructure Forum to discuss these challenges and the choices ahead.