Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttps://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tsri20

Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure

ISSN: 2378-9689 (Print) 2378-9697 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsri20

Toward adaptive infrastructure: the Fifth Discipline

Mikhail V. Chester & Braden Allenby

To cite this article: Mikhail V. Chester & Braden Allenby (2020): Toward adaptive infrastructure:the Fifth Discipline, Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, DOI: 10.1080/23789689.2020.1762045

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23789689.2020.1762045

Published online: 19 May 2020.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 11

View related articles

View Crossmark data

DISCUSSION PAPER

Toward adaptive infrastructure: the Fifth DisciplineMikhail V. Chester and Braden Allenby

Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering, Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering, School of SustainableEngineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

ABSTRACTModern infrastructure have been a relatively stable force for decades, ensuring that basic andcritical services are met, without significantly changing their core designs or management princi-ples. At the dawn of the Anthropocene it appears that accelerating and increasingly uncertainconditions are poised to result in a paradigm shift for infrastructure, where the environments inwhich they operate are changing faster than the systems themselves. New approaches are neededin the education, governance, and physical structures that constitute infrastructure systems thatcan respond in pace. Principles of agility and flexibility appear well suited to help guide how wetransform the management and design of infrastructure. In changing how we approach infra-structure we will need to respond to increasingly wicked challenges. Infrastructure must become aFifth Discipline, focused on learning about the rapidly changing environments and demands inwhich they operate, and agility and flexibility in both governance and technology reconfiguration.

ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 8 January 2020Accepted 23 April 2020

KEYWORDSInfrastructure;Anthropocene; agility andflexibility; adaptive;resilience

1. Introduction

Successful institutions – public or private – adapt to thechanging complexity in the environments in which theyoperate. Adaptability, the capabilities needed to surviveand thrive as the environment in which you functionchanges, has been a topic of study as it relates to humanenterprises for decades. It frequently appears as a con-cept of academic interest in business, management, andcomputer science (Chakravarthy, 1982; Garlan et al.,2004; Hrebiniak & Joyce, 1985; Ross et al., 2003).However, the infrastructure institutions that managethe technologies and systems that deliver critical andbasic services have received remarkably little attentionwhen it comes to adaptability. They are possibly a victimof their own success, in the developed world deliveringservices with the highest reliability, and have been doingso for decades. At the dawn of the Anthropocene theworld appears to be accelerating in many destabilizingways. The Great Acceleration graphs show changes inkey global indicators since 1750, and that since around1950 there has been an acceleration of human activityand associated impacts. Yet the institutions that manageour infrastructure, including the technological solutionsthey deploy, remain rigid and obdurate, reflecting therelatively stable conditions of the past. We cannotunderestimate how destabilizing these forces are pre-dicted to become. While change has always happened,we appear to be entering an era marked by rapid

acceleration and unpredictability of social, technical,and environmental variables in ways that we as humanshave never experienced, and infrastructure are at thecenter of these trends (Figure 1). Infrastructure are athree-part system consisting of physical assets, institu-tions for governance, and education, and each is failingto be agile enough given the rapid pace of change.

We are already becoming overwhelmed by the grow-ing complexity that is just beginning to emerge at dawnof the Anthropocene (Allenby, 2012; Senge, 1990;Tainter, 1988). It’s important to distinguish betweencomplexity and complicatedness prior to discussingrigidity, agility, and flexibility in the context of adapta-tion. Here we define complexity as it relates to infra-structure-based primarily on the inability to predictemergent behaviors. Complexity has emerged from theacceleration and growing uncertainty associated withsocial, technical, and environmental factors, and thecombination thereof, and requires fundamentally newapproaches to how we deliver services (Arbesman, 2017;Helmrich & Chester, 2020; Snowden & Boone, 2007).Yet infrastructure management remains largely rootedin principles for complicated systems (Chester &Allenby, 2019a). Complexity is about flux and unpre-dictability, no right answers, and unknown unknowns,thus requiring creative approaches and pattern-basedleadership that often test before formalizing solutions.Complicatedness on the other hand is about expert

CONTACT Mikhail V. Chester mchester@asu.edu

SUSTAINABLE AND RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTUREhttps://doi.org/10.1080/23789689.2020.1762045

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

diagnosis to assess multiple right answers, knownunknowns, and fact-based management that typicallyemphasizes data collection and analysis to make deci-sions (Chester & Allenby, 2019a; Snowden & Boone,2007). Complexity has always existed with human sys-tems in some form, but the rate of change of humanactivities, technologies, etc., appears to be taking off,resulting in acceleration and scale that is unprecedented(Allenby, 2012; Kurzweil, 2005; Marchant, 2011;Rosenberg & Birdzell, 1986; Syvitski, 2012), and produ-cing a new normal where the predictability of whatinfrastructure will and should do is diminishing. Andnew dynamics, such as Asymmetric Warfare thatleverages the increasingly cyber connected core systemsand lax security, make infrastructure a battlefield incivilizational conflict (Allenby, 2015). We argue thatinfrastructure and the institutions that manage themmust adapt by becoming agile and flexible in responseto the changing complexity of the world around them.In doing so they must become a Fifth Discipline, orga-nizations that are focused on learning about the rapidlychanging environments and demands in which theymust deliver services. The Fifth Discipline concept wasdeveloped by Senge (1990) to describe the necessity oforganizations to learn in complex environments. Thedisciplines – 1) continual clarity and deepening isneeded to see reality objectively, 2) mental modelsmust be challenged; 3) building shared visions is neces-sary to foster commitment; 4) team learning requiresdialogue; and 5) systems thinking is needed to integrate

the first four – are competencies to make sense of com-plex environments, precursors to adaptive and transfor-mative capacity.

The design and management of infrastructure con-tinues to emphasize rigidity through well-establishedmodels developed over the past century when condi-tions were much more predictable. We define rigidity inthe context of infrastructure systems as a highly con-strained ability to adapt to changing internal and exter-nal conditions. In a functioning infrastructure system, itmay arise from physical, institutional, political, or eco-nomic factors, including lock-in to other systems thatprevent responsive change. It may also arise from aninability to perceive or learn rapidly enough to changeappropriately. Rigidity occurs for many reasons includ-ing governance models that emphasize predictability inenvironmental conditions and demand, the use of tech-nologies that hedge risk over long periods under statio-narity assumptions, and educational norms thatemphasize problem-solving in the complicated domain.As such, infrastructure management emphasizes risk-based models that assume stationarity, do not considerwhat may happen when the risk management solutionsfail, and large and permanent assets that are prone togreater damages when they fail (Kim et al., 2019; Park etal., 2011). This model is in many ways the result of theprevalent form of government that oversees infrastruc-ture, the divisional bureaucracy. This form of infrastruc-ture bureaucracy emerged in the early 1900 s withnatural monopolies, first the railroad, and later utilities

Figure 1. Accelerating, Non-Stationary, and Increasingly Unpredictable Emerging Affecting Infrastructure. Each force is represented asa gear that is moving and affecting the ability to deliver and modernize infrastructure services. These forces are becoming increasinglyunpredictable, as represented by different and random rates (ω) by which the gear spins. There are many sources that describe theseforces and their trends including (Allenby, 2015; Arbesman, 2017; Friedlingstein et al., 2006; Fukuyama, 2018; Kissinger, 2014;Kurzweil, 2005; Nye, 2011).

2 M. V. CHESTER AND B. ALLENBY

(Chandler, 1977; Friedlander, 1995a, 1995b; Friedlanderand Initiatives, 1996). It silos functional specializationwith multiple layers of management that i) separatesstrategic visioning from day-to-day operations, and 2)is inimical to interdisciplinary problem solving by creat-ing managerial barriers that work against the exchangeof ideas across expertise silos (Chandler, 1977; Edwards,2003). It was a product of the industrial revolutionreflecting the social and technological complexities ofthe twentieth century. Indeed, the divisional bureau-cracy that has managed infrastructure for a centuryhas allowed for some agility and flexibility, but itappears to operate too slow for the accelerating anduncertain change associated with the Anthropocene.

In Chester and Allenby (2019b) we identified thegrowing challenges associated with the rigid institu-tional forms and associated technologies that drive ourinfrastructure today. We explored industries that exhib-ited agile and flexible characteristics, and synthesizedthese into a set of competencies that we recommend asuseful principles for infrastructure going forward. InGilrein et al. (2019) we used the competencies to iden-tify real-world examples. The competencies and exam-ples covered both centralized to decentralized, green togray, and even dumb to smart configurations of infra-structure and technologies. Furthermore, we discussedboth technological and institutional competencies. Wedid not advocate for any particular configuration butinstead viewed the challenge of implementing agilityand flexibility as one that could deploy any number ofapproaches.

Saxe and MacAskill (2019) provide a thoughtfulresponse to our work, largely arguing that rigidity insome forms may in itself produce agility and flexibility.Their argument appears to be motivated by an urging ofcaution that we should not aggressively seek to changeinfrastructure but instead to look carefully at existingrigid systems that have proven successful. In particular,they argue that 1) rigid infrastructure has providedimmense value (we agree) that we can learn from andleverage; 2) planned obsolescence – specifically theshortening of lifetimes of many assets and then continu-ing their use after their design life – has created aparadigm where many assets are in need of major reha-bilitation and are designed for past demand assump-tions, and longer lifetimes would obviate some of thesechallenges; and 3) centralized large-scale infrastructureprovide stability, a skeleton that can be built upon andutilized for the long term. We address these counter-points while expanding our position on the necessity ofrestructuring infrastructure institutions and the waythey deploy technologies at the dawn of theAnthropocene.

We maintain first and foremost that the institutionsthat manage infrastructure and the technologies theydeploy must reflect the rapidly accelerating and uncer-tain environment in which they operate. As complexityin the world emerges the institutions that operatewithin it need to change to continue delivering servicesin those new environments. Infrastructure have fordecades, if not centuries, operated in environmentsthat have been relatively stable as compared to today,and the institutions and technologies exemplify thisrigidity. Certainly, rigid infrastructure has providedimmense value, but this rigidity was able to persist(that is continue delivering services reliably) becausethe complexity that defined society and technologieswas changing at a pace that the infrastructure systemscould remain viable. More specifically, changes indemand have for nearly a century been slower thanthe capacity of the institution to change. As such, thecycle time of infrastructure change and renewal waseffectively coupled to the cycle time of change in theexternal environment. Breakdown in institutional con-trol and effectiveness occurs when the cycle time of thesubject matter of the institution exceeds the speed withwhich the institution can respond (Osinga, 2007). Weargue that we are at a point in the acceleration ofhuman systems including technology where infrastruc-ture institutions are going to be unable to keep up toremain viable (both institutionally and in their abilityto meet new needs). Similarly, while norms may haveshifted to shorter asset lifetimes, and indeed there arebenefits to locking in longer lifetime assets, the asset(designed for short or long lifetimes) will only beviable as long as the demands and environment inwhich it operates remain in a somewhat stable envel-ope. Evidence mounts that these envelopes are likely tobe greatly exceeded, if not become wholly irrelevantinto the future (COVID-19 gives us a glimpse into howrigid infrastructure are disrupted when demandschange seemingly overnight). Every infrastructure ele-ment relies on design constraints and objectives, andmany of these are derived from assumptions regardingthe state of the external environment within which thatinfrastructure functions. When those implicit assump-tions change, the design becomes obsolete, and some-times even dysfunctional.

Agility and flexibility differ in their applicationbetween physical assets and governance processes. Forphysical assets they can be met through centralized ordecentralized configurations; we imagine future infra-structure having aspects of both. Similarly, we see path-ways for increasing agility and flexibility anywherealong the gray to green spectrum, and the physical tocyber spectrum. Indeed, many of the technologies

SUSTAINABLE AND RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE 3

identified by Gilrein et al. (2019) were decentralized,however, centralized configurations – which we wouldargue today are often configured towards rigidity – canbe managed or designed differently to improve theiragility and flexibility. The topic of agility and flexibilityin infrastructure governance deserves its own paper;however, we think that they are primarily found in theorganizational leadership capabilities needed for bothstable and unstable environments, and transitioningbetween. Infrastructure institutions are structuredaround Administrative leadership for stable conditions(the management of bureaucratic function through thestructuring of tasks, planning, vision building, resourceacquisition, crises management, and organizationalstrategy). Adaptive leadership describes learning pro-cesses (that renegotiates roles, goals, and ideas, some-times through the clashing of ideas and technologies)while Enabling leadership is the ability to shift betweenAdministrative and Adaptive leadership as environ-ments change, and consists of facilitating the movementof information, creating the pressure to act, and provid-ing resources for creativity (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007).

While there are indeed lessons to be learned fromcities and infrastructure that have persisted for centu-ries, we argue that any potential to use these solutionsinto the future must be rooted in their capacity toaddress increasing complexity, not simply because evi-dence suggests they are better than other solutionsabsent of any consideration of the environment theymust function in. Again, we can conceive of pathwayswhere dense urban form that promotes active transport(walking, biking, and transit) and locks in other infra-structure (e.g., power and water) towards agility andflexibility. These pathways must embrace the accelerat-ing climate, technology, and social forces that will drivethe viability of infrastructure at the nexus of supply anddemand. We urge caution in trying to emulate desirableurban forms that exist elsewhere without considerationof the growing complexity that is the new normal.Simply put, in an era of increasing complexity, wecan’t only look backwards for answers to what mightwork for the coming centuries.

Fundamentally, we advocate for changes to infra-structure where the systems (institutions and technolo-gies) respond in pace to the increasing cycle times oftechnologies and embrace the wicked complexity thatincreasingly defines the conditions under which infra-structure must deliver services. We view these institu-tions primarily as knowledge architects for deliveringcritical services, testing and employing information cap-abilities and technologies, i.e., Fifth Disciplines (Senge,1990). These institutions will likely be structured verydifferently than those that govern our infrastructure

today. They will operate based on new principles thataccept uncertainty and rapid change as normal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported in part by grants from the U.S.National Science Foundation (Award No. SRN-1444755 andGCR-1934933) and Office of Naval Research (Award No.N00014-18-1-2393).

Notes on contributors

Mikhail V. Chester Ph.D. is the Director of the Metis Centerfor Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering at ArizonaState University where he maintains a research programfocused on preparing infrastructure and their institutions forthe challenges of the coming century. His work spans climateadaptation, disruptive technologies, innovative financing,transitions to agility and flexibility, and modernization ofinfrastructure management. He is broadly interested in howwe need to change infrastructure governance, design, andeducation for the Anthropocene, an era marked by accelera-tion and uncertainty. He is co-lead of the Urban Resilience toExtremes research network composed of 19 institutions and250 researchers across the Americas, focused on developinginnovative infrastructure solutions for extreme events.

Braden Allenby is the Lincoln Professor of EngineeringEthics, and President’s Professor of Civil, Environmental,and Sustainable Engineering, and of Law, at Arizona StateUniversity. His areas of interest are design for environment,earth systems engineering and management, industrial ecol-ogy, sustainable engineering, and emerging technologies. Heis a AAAS Fellow and a Fellow of the Royal Society for theArts, Manufactures & Commerce. He was the U.S. NavalAcademy Stockdale Fellow in 2009–2010, a TempletonFellow in 2008–2010, and the J. Herbert Hollowman Fellowat the National Academy of Engineering in 1991-1992.

ORCID

Mikhail V. Chester http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9354-2102

References

Allenby, B. R. (2012). The theory and practice of sustainableengineering. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Allenby, B. R. (2015). The paradox of dominance: The age ofcivilizational conflict. Bulletin of Atomic Science, 71(2), 60–74. doi:10.1177/0096340215571911

Arbesman, S. (2017). Overcomplicated: Technology at the lim-its of comprehension. London: Penguin.

Chakravarthy, B. S. (1982). Adaptation: A promising meta-phor for strategic management. Academy of ManagementReview, 7(1), 35–44. doi:10.5465/amr.1982.4285438

4 M. V. CHESTER AND B. ALLENBY

Chandler, A. (1977). The visible hand: The managerial revolu-tion in american business. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

Chester, M. V., & Allenby, B. (2019a). Infrastructure as awicked complex process. Elementa: Science of theAnthropocene, 7(1), 21. doi:10.1525/elementa.360

Chester, M. V., & Allenby, B. (2019b). Toward adaptive infra-structure: Flexibility and agility in a non-stationarity age.Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 4(4), 173–191.doi:10.1080/23789689.2017.1416846

Edwards, P. (2003). Infrastructure and modernity: Force, time,and social organization in the history of sociotechnical sys-tems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Friedlander, A. (1995a). Emerging infrastructure: The growthof railroads. Washington, DC: Corporation for NationalResearch Initiatives.

Friedlander, A. (1995b). Natural monopoly and universal ser-vice: Telephones and telegraphs in the U.S. Communicationsinfrastructure, 1837-1940. Washington, DC: Corporationfor National Research Initiatives.

Friedlander, A. and Initiatives, C. for N.R.. (1996). Power andlight: Electricity in the U.S. energy infrastructure, 1870-1940.Washington, DC: Corporation for National ResearchInitiatives.

Friedlingstein, P., Cox, P., Betts, R., Bopp, L., von Bloh, W.,Brovkin, V., Cadule, P., Doney, S., Eby, M., Fung, I., Bala,G., John, J., Jones, C., Joos, F., Kato, T., Kawamiya, M.,Knorr, W., Lindsay, K., Matthews, H. D., Raddatz, T.,Rayner, P., Reick, C., Roeckner, E., Schnitzler, K.-G.,Schnur, R., Strassmann, K., Weaver, A. J., Yoshikawa, C.,& Zeng, N. (2006). Climate–carbon cycle feedback analysis:Results from the C 4 MIP model intercomparison. Journalof Climate, 19(14), 3337–3353. doi:10.1175/JCLI3800.1

Fukuyama, F. (2018). Identity: The demand for dignity and thepolitics of resentment. Farrar: Straus and Giroux.

Garlan, D., Cheng, S.-W., Huang, A.-C., Schmerl, B., &Steenkiste, P. (2004). Rainbow: Architecture-based self-adaptation with reusable infrastructure. Computer, 37(10),46–54. doi:10.1109/MC.2004.175

Gilrein, E. J., Carvalhaes, T. M., Markolf, S. A., Chester, M. V.,Allenby, B. R., & Garcia, M. (2019). Concepts and practicesfor transforming infrastructure from rigid to adaptable.Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 1–22. doi:10.1080/23789689.2019.1599608

Helmrich, A., & Chester, M. (2020). Reconciling complexityand deep uncertainty in infrastructure design for climateadaptation. Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 1–17.doi:10.1080/23789689.2019.1708179

Hrebiniak, L. G., & Joyce, W. F. (1985). Organizational adap-tation: Strategic choice and environmental determinism.

Administrative Science Quarterly, 30(3), 336–349.doi:10.2307/2392666

Kim, Y., Chester, M. V., Eisenberg, D. A., & Redman, C. L.(2019). The infrastructure trolley problem: positioningsafe-to-fail infrastructure for climate change adaptation.Earths Future, 7. doi:10.1029/2019EF001208

Kissinger, H. (2014). World order. London: Penguin Press.Kurzweil, R. (2005). The singularity is near: When humans

transcend biology. London: Penguin.Marchant, G. E. (2011). The growing gap between emerging

technologies and the law. In G. E. Marchant, B. R. Allenby, &J. R. Herkert (Eds.), The growing gap between emerging tech-nologies and legal-ethical oversight: The pacing problem, theinternational library of ethics, law and technology (pp. 19–33).Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-1356-7_2

Nye, J. S. (2011). The future of power. New York, NY:PublicAffairs.

Osinga, F. P. B. (2007). Science, strategy and war: The strategictheory of John Boyd. Abingdon: Routledge.

Park, J., Seager, T. P., & Rao, P. S. C. (2011). Lessons in risk-versus resilience-based design and management. IntegratedEnvironmental Assessment and Management, 7(3), 396–399. doi:10.1002/ieam.228

Rosenberg, N., & Birdzell, L. E. (1986). How the west grewrich: The economic transformation of the industrialworld. London: Tauris.

Ross, B. D., Turnbull, P. W., & Wilson, D. T. (2003). Dyadicadaptation in business-to-business markets. EuropeanJournal of Marketing, 37(11/12), 1636–1665. doi:10.1108/03090560310495393

Saxe, S., & MacAskill, K. (2019). Toward adaptive infrastruc-ture: The role of existing infrastructure systems.Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 1–4. doi:10.1080/23789689.2019.1681822

Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The art and practiceof the learning organization. New York, NY: Doubleday/Currency.

Snowden, D., & Boone, M. (2007). A leader’s framework fordecision making. Harvard Business Review.

Syvitski, J. (2012). Anthropocene: An epoch of our making.Global Change, 78.

Tainter, J. (1988). The collapse of complex societies.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. (2007). Complexityleadership theory: Shifting leadership from the industrialage to the knowledge era. Leadersh. The LeadershipQuarterly, 18(4), 298–318. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.04.002

SUSTAINABLE AND RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE 5