Infrastructure needs consistency

ANALYSIS
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News

The threads of national infrastructure are delicately, and dangerously, intertwined

Infrastructure, as a topic, is boring.

Yet without our roads, electricity grids, sewers and phone lines the country would grind to a halt. There'd be no food, water or power and pretty well everyone in the UK would be in dire straits.

The Institution of Civil Engineers warned this week that these networks, so critical to our day-to day lives, are vulnerable to everything from terrorism to bad weather.

But a separate report commissioned by the Prime Minister has warned the real threat is from complacency.

According to one of the most influential voices in science policy, Wellcome Trust head Sir Mark Walport, "we take our national infrastructure for granted - but we discover extremely quickly if it stops working".

Government has to take responsibility for developing a strategy in the long term national interest Professor John Beddington UK government chief scientist

Sir Mark was asked by the Council for Science and Technology to do some hard thinking on what should be done to modernise our national infrastructure.

He's identified a number of shortcomings, the chief problem being that decisions on our water mains or power stations are made on an ad hoc basis - largely to increase profits for the utility that runs a given part of infrastructure.

But a gain in efficiency can come at the cost of a loss of resilience in the event of a crisis.

Consistency of vision

The starkest example was the flooding in the UK in 2007, which exposed the UK's antiquated drainage and sewerage systems. But according to Sir Mark, it is a similar story in other areas.

He has recommended that a single government department take the lead in developing what he calls "a consistency of vision" for our infrastructure.

This would involve creating a joined-up strategy for what the country now needs - particularly in light of the inter-connectedness of critical bits of our infrastructure.

For example, if our communications systems fail, our IT systems stop working. This in turn can affect our power distribution systems, which can hit transportation.

The floods of 2007 exposed the UK's outdated drains

"Our critical infrastructure is lined up like dominoes all in a row," said Professor Brian Collins, the scientific adviser for the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

"That makes each of them more vulnerable. If one falls the rest fall. No one has really thought that through."

The report was endorsed by the government's chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, who says that regulation needs to be changed to incentivise more strategic thinking.

"Government has to take responsibility for developing a strategy in the long-term national interest," he said.

"Regulation has to be more joined up so that investment decisions are made not just to improve the efficiency of a particular utility, but of the infrastructure as a whole."

According to Sir Mark, dealing with the haphazard way in which our infrastructure is managed is a nettle that the government has to grasp.

"Infrastructure is what distinguishes the developed world from the less developed world and it is critical for our economic development," he said.