The Whole System Approach - Integrating Holistic Asset Management with Green Infrastructure

We have collectively arrived at an infrastructure crossroads.  The implementation of full spectrum public infrastructure asset management will be one of the dominating themes this century.  Designing, constructing, and managing highly complex public infrastructure in a resource constrained world has collided head on into a world of limited fiscal resources.  Greater attention and focus will be required in the context of the efficiency and effectiveness of our public infrastructure management systems. 

The demand for better asset management is also taking place under a global desire and need for innovative and comprehensive green infrastructure policies.  The environmental, economic, and social benefits of green infrastructure have become broadly understood and accepted.  Public concerns regarding a more sustainable world have produced a need for planners, engineers, and asset managers to have a broader and more holistic view of our national infrastructure.  In many ways, the questions of green infrastructure (How to protect and preserve existing natural resources, Where to direct development in the community, and How to develop on individual sites?) have collided with the key questions of asset management (What do we own, Where is it located, What condition is it in, and How long will it last?).  A new paradigm is emerging that will require linking the management philosophy of asset management with the goals of a greener and more sustainable future. 

We live and work in a highly complex world of systems, yet don’t always see the whole of systems and interfaces in the context of public and private infrastructure.  We rarely ask questions in the context of infrastructure systems and behavior – from the full range of technical issues to social concerns to economic constraints to environmental sustainability.  This new paradigm will require public officials and managers to have the ability to identify and understand the critical infrastructure interdependencies that exist in a broad spectrum of public and private infrastructure systems.  We have a collective imperative to reimagine our public infrastructure systems with the goal of breaking through institutional silos and finding innovation that connects systems for the greatest community wide benefit for the long term.

Driving along any highway or road in the United States illustrates the problem of how we have heavily invested in many infrastructure systems, which for the most part are managed separately and are uncoordinated.  Roughly 30% of any community is covered by streets and sidewalks.  Much of this property in the public right-of-way is the most valuable real estate.  Beneath the highway pavement you have an assortment of critical infrastructure – sanitary sewer, water, stormwater, natural gas, electricity, and telecommunications.  If one organization or business entity owned this entire infrastructure, it would be unthinkably poor management not to closely coordinate maintenance and replacement activities across business lines. 

Yet that is exactly what happens.  Under the public’s wealth of high value real estate is a collection of multi-agency ownership driven by multi-purposes with their own mandates, budgets, planning, and work cultures.  Thinking in terms of system asset management is the exception rather than the rule.  The “whole-system approach” revolves around the idea that systems are best understood in the context of how these parts and people from relationships with each other and with other systems and not as the working of individuals and independent components.

The idea of a more sustainable and green stormwater solution highlights the challenges and opportunities embedded in a broader and more comprehensive view of asset management.  The “greening” of stormwater management provides an excellent case study on the need to bridge the divides and link the silos of asset management and green infrastructure policies.  As previously mentioned, city and county government have limited financial resources to allocate to the many demands under local control.  This includes stormwater management and the costs for implementing and enforcing the expensive Clean Water Act requirements.  With decreased funding from the federal government to pay for operations and maintenance of existing public stormwater systems as well as the costs associated with implementing long-term control plans, local governments and citizens must identify and select the most cost-effective solutions to meet regulatory requirements.

In light of these predicted costs for stormwater, sanitary, and combined sewer systems, using green infrastructure as a form of asset management is a major driver behind the shift towards establishing a hybrid system of grey, piped infrastructure and green vegetated infrastructure.  By using green infrastructure to divert flow from sewer systems, grey infrastructure costs can be reduced in terms of operations and maintenance costs and future systems can be smaller in size.

Many communities are passing green infrastructure policies as a means for better managing existing infrastructure assets and avoiding future operations and maintenance costs.  The menu of green infrastructure assets in terms of stormwater includes bioswales, rain gardens, infiltration practices, street trees, and porous paving materials.  For most capital and transportation projects, green infrastructure assets constitute a small percentage of the total funding requirements.  The real challenge is the integration of what is known regarding the existing infrastructure assets with the proposed green infrastructure.

Integrating green projects into the infrastructure matrix seems the perfect time and opportunity to examine a more holistic view of asset management.  The introduction of porous pavement, underground storage reservoirs, stormwater bump-outs, and infiltration trenches will require communities and leaders to examine all the infrastructure components that interface and produce interdependencies with existing assets.  Knowing the location, condition, and projected life of existing water and sanitary sewer utilities under a roadway is critical when designing infiltration trenches and storage reservoirs.  It makes little sense to focus on roadway and green assets without an understanding of the condition and projected service life of utilities that directly interface with the project site.  In terms of afford, resilient, sustainable, and integrated management practices, it also makes little sense to design green infiltration points near critical infrastructure – such as high volume telecommunication vaults.

If you have to dig up a street in a more sustainable world – it is important to have an asset management operating philosophy that supports the goal of digging it up once.  The “digging it up once” mentality in the world of holistic asset management and expanding green infrastructure policies will require leaders and managers to have a new and more robust set of tools and platforms.  These tools will include the development of asset registers in a GIS platform that facilities more comprehensive planning and analysis.  It will include a greater need and focus on asset condition assessment for renewal and replacement planning.   It will include the development of strategic plans that better integrate the worlds of grey and green infrastructure.  It will include a greater reliance on computerized maintenance management systems to better track the benefits of green infrastructure policy implementation.  It will allow public officials and leaders the opportunity to better optimize the balancing between O&M and CIP investments and grey and green.