Region: Global
Country: Global / Non-Specific
Keywords: Age of Disruption
Document Link(s):
Document Summary:
Infrastructure technology, or InfraTech, can be described as the integration of material, machine, and digital technologies across the infrastructure life cycle. At its broadest definition, InfraTech can be considered any technology that impacts the development, delivery, and ongoing operation of infrastructure. This may include technologies used to define the strategic requirements of infrastructure or enable data-driven decision-making, innovations in finance and funding that support the commercial management of an asset, or technologies integral to the relationship a customer has with infrastructure services. From a policy perspective, it is important to make the distinction between the design of technologies in the operations of infrastructure planning and delivery versus the integration of technologies into the structures themselves, which changes the nature of infrastructure assets from simple inanimate objects to dynamic information systems.
Document Details:
Previous G20 initiatives have highlighted the importance of infrastructure as a driver of economic prosperity and the basis for strong, sustainable, balanced, and inclusive growth and sustainable development. The Roadmap to Infrastructure as an Asset Class (Roadmap), endorsed by G20 Leaders in 2018, stressed the need to mobilize private capital to fill the infrastructure-financing gap. The importance of private-sector participation in infrastructure is even greater now because government fiscal space is severely constrained as a result of COVID-19. Recent technological advances have dramatically reduced the cost of gathering, storing, analyzing and using data, these advances can support the Roadmap by providing enhanced data, tools as well as facilitate investors’ ability to make informed decisions. Technology also presents new opportunities for infrastructure investors by creating new markets and business models and the potential for enhanced revenues. The rapid pace of technological advancement also creates new risks for investors and infrastructure end users— that can be mitigated by appropriate policy interventions.
More recently, continued work on the goal set out by the Roadmap has materialized through the G20 Principles for Quality Infrastructure Investment (QII) established in 2019, under Japan's G20 Presidency. The principles emphasize the need to focus on the quality of infrastructure investment. Emphasizing quality helps attain value for money and ensures that projects remain affordable by taking into account total life-cycle costs as well as economic, environmental, and social benefits. The quality dimensions of infrastructure include maximizing its positive impact to achieve sustainable growth and development, economic efficiency, environmental and social considerations, connectivity, local economic and social contribution, good governance, and resilience. Leveraging innovative technology solutions can play an important role in advancing Quality Infrastructure and in turn the Roadmap.
Updated: December 26, 2023