Bringing Information Technology to Infrastructure

Over the last decade, the development and operation of conventional infrastructure, such as transportation, water and power systems, has increasingly become dependent on information technologies (IT). Due to the rapid rate of advances in IT, especially compared to the rate of
infrastructure advances, the examination of its impacts and potential benefits for other infrastructure have not been fully examined or understood. Civil infrastructure research and IT research have largely advanced along separate paths, and although the connections and interdependencies are more apparent now than ever, no comprehensive agenda for merging these research areas exists. This is the context in which the idea for a National Science Foundation funded workshop emerged. The Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS) at New York University organized and led, "Bringing Information Technology to Infrastructure: A Workshop to Develop a Research Agenda," as a starting place to identify research that would bring IT and infrastructure research closer together.