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Do You Think Pipelines Are Safe?

29 Jun 2018, Posted by staff in Aii Asks, All Posts

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?

31 Jan 2018, Posted by staff in All Posts, Blog Posts

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…

What is Infrastructure?

18 Jan 2018, Posted by staff in All Posts, Blog Posts

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…

Grid Security – Between Hype and Heads in the Sand

31 Oct 2017, Posted by staff in All Posts, Blog Posts

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,…

Achieving A Sustainable Highway Infrastructure

12 Sep 2017, Posted by staff in All Posts, Blog Posts

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…

Trump Signs Infrastructure Executive Order

16 Aug 2017, Posted by staff in All Posts, Blog Posts

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…

Digging Deeper: Volume 1

15 Aug 2017, Posted by staff in All Posts, Blog Posts

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…

The U.S. Electric Grid: A Primer

15 Aug 2017, Posted by staff in All Posts, Blog Posts

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…

DIRT Blog Update

08 Jun 2017, Posted by staff in All Posts, Blog Posts

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…

House Water Infrastructure Bill Includes Critical Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund Fix

05 Jul 2016, Posted by staff in All Posts, Blog Posts

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; •…

Electromagnetic Pulse Attacks: Are We Ready?

01 Jun 2016, Posted by staff in All Posts, Blog Posts

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…