09051 Six Primary Threats to Infrastructure

It's not that hard times are coming, it's that soft times are going. — Harpo Marx

Nothing stays where you put it. Entropy is always at work. Murphy’s Law and the Laws of Thermodynamics operate with infrastructure too. Continuing our discussion of resilience based on the work of Vinay Gupta, he identifies six primary threats to infrastructure:

Neglect. Mechanical systems must be maintained. Personnel must be trained. Vital information systems must be backed up. Any decrease in maintenance will yield an increase in neglect and that will eat away at infrastructure.

Time, Wear, and Tear. Even with maintenance, systems and equipment must eventually be replaced or substantially repaired. People need training, supply, and safety to be effective operators of infrastructure.

Operators. Infrastructure systems require highly trained personnel to operate them. Lack of trained personnel can be a factor in infrastructure devolution, especially during pandemics, wars, insurrections, etc.

System Externalities. No system is an island. All infrastructure systems are interconnected and to a greater or lesser extent dependent upon other systems to continue operating. A basic example: a power plant requires fuel. No fuel = no power. A power plant requires trained operators. No operators = no power. A power plant requires a distribution grid. If weather or violence damages the distribution grid, there is no power.

Economics. Personnel must be paid. Supplies and fuel must be bought. Taxes (and sometimes bribes) are necessary.

Violence/Disaster. These hazards destroy both physical infrastructure and trained personnel, often quickly and without warning.

The consequences of infrastructure failure range from minor inconvenience to mass death.

These threats to infrastructure integrate with many negative connections.

In permaculture we focus on increasing beneficial connections. Alas for us all, because of the Default Excess Consumption Design System, negative connections characterize our world's systems. Just as beneficial connections magnify the positive effects (synergy) of a chain of actions, negative connections magnify the negative effects (dysergy) of a series of negative events.

The synergy of beneficial connections often seems greater than the sum of its parts.

The dysergy of negative connections often seems greater than the sum of its parts.

This is why we often say, as we observe a cascading series of negative events, “One thing leads to another.” We say that because it’s true. Negative connections spawn negative happenings. To stop negative events — to break the potential for a negative chain of events — before they happen is the essence of persistence. It is almost always easier to stop something from happening than it is to pick up the pieces afterwards in repair and replacement of damage.

The best places to intervene are early in the process. As the ball gets rolling, it has inertia and it won’t want to stop. More negative connections click in and that drives the situation onward at an increasing velocity toward the catastrophe.

If those responsible for the Titanic had seen the ice berg earlier, and turned the ship away, the ship would not have sunk. They didn’t see it in time. The ship hit the iceberg and sank with great loss of life, in spite of much heroism and last minute attempts to save the situation.

So when we think of designing for resilience, we look for beneficial connections to add to our systems.

We look for negative connections that we can eliminate.

We follow those negative connections to the best of our ability all along their chain of causality to the origination point. If possible, we eliminate every step in that chain of connections and if we can’t do that, we figure out some way to reduce the likelihood of activating a chain of negative connections. We seek to mitigate or short-circuit the cascading events once the dysergistic process erupts.

Finding and linking those beneficial connections — discovering and breaking the negative links — are two sides of the same coin of resilience, persistence, and constancy. The process of resolving these threats, mitigating these hazards, and growing systems that are less brittle and more resilient and persistent involves a continuation of the search for patterns with the characteristics we listed in 09031. Since redundancy is a good thing we will list them again here. The most desirable patterns are those that —

stack functions,
provide redundancy,
offer many beneficial connections,
use natural methods, featuring the biological, the small, and the slow,
are conservative of all forms of stuff (resources, energy, money, etc.),
are conservative in their demands on people.
are regenerative of systems and supplies.

Demand destruction and replacement is an essential aspect of infrastructure protection. When demand strains services, the risk of collapse or other damage to the system increases. Expanding infrastructure to meet the needs of new demand is a major expense for infrastructure providers. Actions we take to reduce our demand for infrastructure services help protect existing systems from damage and reduce the need for new capital investments.

Besides shoring up existing infrastructure systems, and limiting our demand, work needs to be done to develop alternative, parallel infrastructure systems that can take over if the primary infrastructure systems fail. Depending on the context, this may include household and local storage of food, water, and other critical items, devising new ways to provide infrastructure services at the neighborhood level, and perhaps even discovering ways to eliminate our need for certain infrastructure services.