Challenges and Opportunities for Innovation in the Public Works ...

Yet there have been notable successes in which local communities have been united and mobilized to
come to grips with their infrastructure problems. Identifying the common elements of these successes will give
infrastructure planners, administrators, designers, builders, and operators better understanding and guidance in
formulating development and management strategies. This guidance will in turn enhance -at the national
level--the performance and efficiency of our aggregate investments in infrastructure.
Three colloquia are being held to defin, these common elements of success, in Phoenix, Arizona,
Cincinnati, Ohio, and Boston, Massachusetts. These three regions were selected from among a long list of
proposals, based on eight principal criteria:
"* Uses of innovative technology
"* Transferability of technology
"* Demonstrated overcoming of barriers to use of new technology
"* Demonstration of constituency building and community support
"* Demonstration of effective citizen involvement
"* Effective improvement of existing infrastructure (vs. new-build)
"* Demonstration of unique institutional approaches
"* Effective application of life cycle cost/benefit analysis as a management tool, particularly in the
context of political decision-making
Each colloquium will serve as a reconnaissance or "fact finding" workshop involving local professionals
familiar with how infrastructure issues were raised and resolved in their communities. Following the third
colloquium, scheduled for August, 1992, the BRB will prepare a report on the common lessons learned and how
these lessons may be more widely applied.
Partial support for these symposia has been received from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil
Works, Department of the Army, and the Program for Structures and Building Systems, National Science
Foundation. Additional support is being solicited.
NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE RESEARCH AGENDA
A second element of the BRB's strategic program will be a study to define the state-of-the-art, basic
research needs and priorities related to the structures, geomechanics, and building systems of infrastructure. This
study is being undertaken by the BRB at the request of the National Science Foundation's Division of Mechanical
and Structural Systems of the Directorate of Engineering, in cooperation with the NRC's Geotechnical Board.
The resulting research agenda will present high-priority opportunities that may be used by the National Science
Foundation and the research community to guide basic infrastructure core research, targeted ultimately to
provide lessons of cross-cutting value for effective infrastructure development and management.
The study will be focused on fundamental underpinnings of physical infrastructure technology, but will
be shaped by the broad national policy debate reflected in such reports as those by the National Council on
Public Works Improvement and others, and work by committees of the NRC and National Academy of
Engineering. The study will also build on other infrastructure research agenda-setting efforts, including work
by the Building Research Board and the Geotechnical Board, and the recent work of other organizations such
as the Civil Engineering Research Foundation's "National Civil Engineering Research Needs Forum" and the
International Society for Arboriculture's "National Research Agenda for Urban Forestry in the 1990s."
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