Infrastructure in America

 You can tell a lot about a nation by the condition of the infrastructure. Infrastructure is defined as “the underlying foundation or basic framework of a system or organization  Infrastructure is the four-syllable jawbreaker that governments use to describe the concrete, stone, steel, wires and wood that Americans rely on every day but barely notice until something goes awry.

The term “infrastructure” was defined by The American Heritage Dictionary [4] as: “The basic facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a community or society, such as transportation and communications systems, water and power lines, and public institutions including schools, post offices, and prisons.”

 It includes airports, the electrical energy grid, hazardous and solid waste storage sites, navigable inland waterways, public parks, schools and even the security to protect all of those structures. The road, rail, water, sewer, electric power, wired telephone, and other distributed systems infrastructure, ports, airports, and rail terminals, levees, coastal defenses, and dams are need to be considered as part of infrastructure  Infrastructure is the combination of fundamental systems that support a community, region, or country. It includes everything from water and sewer systems to road and rail networks to the national power and natural gas grids.

The World Bank (1994) in its World Development Report – Infrastructure and Development focuses on economic infrastructure and includes services from:  Public utilities power, telecommunications, piped water supply, sanitation and sewerage, solid waste collection and disposal, and piped gas.  Public works, roads and major dam and canal works for irrigation and drainage.  Other transport sectors urban and interurban railways, urban transport, ports and waterways, and airports. Infrastructure is an umbrella term for many activities referred to as "social overhead capital" by such development economists as Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, Ragnar Nurkse, and Albert Hirschman.

A special component of infrastructure is Critical infrastructure  The assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, so vital to a particular country that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, public health or safety, or any combination thereof. Types

 The physical and information technology facilities, networks, services and assets which, if disrupted or destroyed, would have a serious impact on the health, safety, security or economic well-being of citizens or the effective functioning of governments.  Processes, systems, facilities, technologies, networks, assets and services essential to the health, safety, security or economic well-being of society and the effective functioning of government.  It can be stand-alone or interconnected and interdependent within and across provinces, territories and national borders. Disruptions of critical infrastructure could result in catastrophic loss of life, adverse economic effects and significant harm to public confidence.

Critical infrastructure includes:  energy installations and networks;  communications and information technology;  finance (banking, securities and investment);  health care;  food;  water (dams, storage, treatment and networks);  transport (airports, ports, intermodal facilities, railway and mass transit networks and traffic control systems);  production, storage and transport of dangerous goods (e.g. chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials);  government (e.g. critical services, facilities, information networks, assets and key national sites and monuments).

 The US President issued an Executive Order which states that “certain national infrastructures are so vital that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on the defense or economic security of the United States". [5] It is where the term "critical infrastructure" was highlighted.  According to E.O , these critical infrastructures were: telecommunications; electrical power systems; gas and oil storage and transportation; banking and finance; transportation; water supply systems; emergency services (including medical, police, fire, and rescue) and continuity of government.

 A growing number of American nations understand that their competitive position and quality of life depends on investing both in growing infrastructure backlogs and cutting-edge opportunities.  They know that to succeed in the global marketplace, and compete successfully for jobs and residents, they must build 21st century infrastructure.

 Infrastructure helps determine the success of manufacturing and agricultural activities. Investments in water, sanitation, energy, housing, and transport also improve lives and help reduce poverty.  And new information and communication technologies promote growth, improve delivery of health and other services, expand the reach of education, and support social and cultural advances.

References areas   4&play=1

Threats to infrastructure in America  Catastrophic failures and crumblings due to inadequate maintenance – such as bridge collapse, rail blockages etc  Terrorism  Disasters and global environmental changes – Hurricanes, Earthquakes  Computer viruses and cyber attacks – computer systems hacked. Disrupting or even disabling the infrastructure may reduce the ability to defend the nation, erode public confidence in critical services, and reduce economic strength. Some of the attacks are coming not just from individual cybercriminals but terrorists and foreign nation states.

 The attacks that are occurring include massive denial of service attacks, stealthy efforts to penetrate networks undetected, DNS poisoning, SQL injection attacks and malware infections.  The aims of the attacks vary from shutting down services or operations to theft of services and data or extortion attempts.

Three types of failure 1.Common cause failure – for example, various facilities (fuel storage, airports and power stations) that are located in geographic proximity are likely to be harmed from a single incident of flooding 2.Cascading failure – Disruption of a control system in one infrastructure, for example, water leads to disruption of a second infrastructure, for example in transportation, the flooding of a roads, and then a third for example food supply chain and so on. 3.Escalating failure – Disruption of one infrastructure, for example a communication network harms the efforts to fix other infrastructures that have been damaged by another entity (e.g. emergency services, commerce)

 One of the key signs that we are in the early stages of an economic collapse and that we are heading towards another Great Depression is America's crumbling infrastructure.  The truth is that our infrastructure is literally falling apart all around us. Thousands of bridges are structurally deficient and there have already been some very high profile collapses.

Aging sewer systems are leaking raw sewage all over the place. The power grid is straining to keep up with the ever-increasing thirst of the American people for electricity. There have already been some regional blackouts, and unless something is done quickly things promise to get even worse. What does a crumbling infrastructure system mean for economic growth  bending-facts-of-americas-crumbling- infrastructure/ bending-facts-of-americas-crumbling- infrastructure/

1.Examine the reasons why nation states in America are paying increasing attention to the development and improvement of green infrastructure in their countries? 2.With reference to any of the following infrastructure projects in America, examine the relevance of high capital investments to the development of the region  The St. Lawrence Seaway  The Panama Canal  High Speed Rail in America  Highway Building projects in America  The Port of New York  Hoover Dam