We asked: Do you think pipelines are safe? According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, “more than 2.6 million miles of pipelines safely deliver trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and hundreds of billions of ton/miles of liquid petroleum products each year.” 166…
What is Innovation? No one really seems to know. Few can agree on a comprehensive definition because it means different things in different contexts. But most definitions align on three points. For an idea to be innovative (1) the idea must be new, (2) the idea must create value, and…
Defining Infrastructure To engage in comprehensive and intelligent discussion regarding our nation’s infrastructure policy, we first need to be thoughtful about what qualifies as “infrastructure.” There is no unanimously adopted definition of infrastructure across sectors or policy lexicon. Many definitions describe “infrastructure” as the physical components of various systems that…
While power is back on at the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport, the question remains: what happened to make the busiest airport in the world lose power for 11 hours on Sunday and strand tens of thousands of passengers for days?[1] Basically, an electrical fire in a tunnel beneath the airport…
Last June, Congress passed and the President signed the Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act of 2016 (PIPES Act). Among the bill’s numerous other provisions was a hidden gem. Congress asked the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) to conduct a study on how new technologies…
Aii Founder and Chairman, Brigham McCown, was privileged to speak to the students and faculty at the Schar School of Policy and Government and Scalia Law School at George Mason University on the importance of grid security and maintaining our infrastructure. Covering both policy and technical issues to energy policy,…
By Samuel G. Bonasso, PE FASCE* As we look up at the sky and dream of tomorrow’s new sustainable infrastructure ideas, we must also remember to look at what is under our feet. The answer to many of the problems which drive our sustainable infrastructure concerns today will not be…
On Wednesday, September 6, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on the Energy & Commerce Committee’s SELF DRIVE Act (H.R. 3388) – the first comprehensive autonomous vehicle legislation (AV) to reach the floor of either chamber of Congress. This bill, which passed out of committee with unanimous, bipartisan support…
This afternoon, President Trump signed an Executive Order to speed up permit approvals for roads, bridges, waterways, and other major infrastructure projects by improving coordination between agencies, and making the process more predictable and transparent. Under the order, each major project will have a lead agency responsible for coordinating with…
How Economic Indicators And Population Demographics Impact Incident Rates “Digging Deeper” is the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure’s (Aii) new blog series focused on using the Common Ground Alliance’s Damage Information Reporting Tool’s (DIRT) inaugural interactive data dashboard to track indicators, trends, and correlations with the goal of zeroing in…
On July 12, we published “Building a Smarter Electric Grid: How Investing in Smarter Electricity Infrastructure Will Energize America,” a white-paper focused on the opportunities presented by a “smarter” electric network and the specific investments that should be made to take full advantage of tomorrow’s energy technologies without sacrificing the…
By Samuel G. Bonasso, PE* The sheer size of the U.S. requires a sophisticated interstate highway system to facilitate commerce, tourism, and more, essentially making the surface transportation system our most important public utility. While most people associate the term “utility” with their electricity, water, or gas services, Webster’s New…
Last summer, we published “Improving Upon Our Dig Laws: How State Legislatures Can Help Us Dig Safer,” where we performed an extensive review of the incident data revealed in the Common Ground Alliance’s (CGA) 2014 DIRT report (released in Fall 2015), offered some recommendations states could incorporate into their Damage…
By Staff On May 25, the U.S. House of Representatives’ (House) Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I Committee) passed The Water Resources Development Act of 2016. The T&I Committee’s bill summary highlights many of the bill’s provisions, including: • Authorizing appropriations for port, channel, lock, dam and other infrastructure projects; •…
A recent Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) report indicates that the United States electric grid is still vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse attacks, despite recommendations made almost 8 years ago to reduce such an occurrence. The susceptibility of the grid to such a phenomenon is an out-of-the-box threat many regulators and policymakers…
