Public policy implications of harmonizing engineering technology with socio-economic modeling: Application to transportation infrastructure management

The persistent infrastructure underinvestment coupled with a significant growth in commercial and non-commercial transportation demand has rendered the US transportation infrastructure unprepared for current and future demands. A significant improvement in the condition of the US transportation infrastructure must be grounded on a more sustainable and proactive approach to address the existing gap between short-term commitments and long-term needs. This paper demonstrates in quantitative terms the value of long-term investments to overcome the historical impediments to infrastructure rehabilitation, including the need for a proactive political structure that compensates for the apparent lack of public accountability, and for the poor understanding of the socio-economic effects caused by transportation infrastructure failures. Such a process could avoid impending catastrophes. This paper presents a modeling paradigm that accounts for multiple stakeholder perspectives and relates the formulation of public policy to a long-term horizon through the modeling of the transportation infrastructure as a system of systems. The methodology enables involved stakeholders and decision makers to visualize their shared interests and to promote coordinated individual decisions in order to achieve a more acceptable level of the overall system of systems objectives. To illustrate the relevance of the proposed modeling approach, we apply it to a bridge maintenance problem and we discuss the synthesis of existing engineering practice with socio-economic factors that aids in streamlining long-term infrastructure goals with immediate short-term needs. The insights obtained from the proposed system of systems methodological approach point to the need to adopt a more forward-looking and collaborative public policy for infrastructure maintenance.