Civil Infrastructure Decision Making as a Chaotic Sociotechnical System: Role of Information Systems in Engaging Stakeholders and Democratizing Innovation

摘要

Globalization, deregulation, and the evolving knowledge economy-along with the calls for sustainable systems, the push for new urban-ism, and the increasing interest in context-sensitive designs-are pushing for changing the current decision-making system in civil infrastructure. It is argued that infrastructure is, finally, being transferred from a technical/business project into a sociotechnical project that is part of the evolving knowledge economy and e-society. Civil infrastructure projects will be managed by ad hoc virtual organizations where the customers are the key innovators, public officials are the supporters of innovation (by explaining and, when possible, breaking constraints), and engineers coordinate and manage idea/people networks. Researchers, professionals, and public officials have to adopt new business models to add value in this new vision. How can we (researchers, decision makers, and industrial stakeholders), support a reverse-marketing system in infrastructure design and management? In other words, how can we help communities come up with, evaluate, and promote their own sociotechnical random ideas, on the one hand, and then drive innovative order from these ideas on the other? How can we establish trust and open exchange of ideas and needs between community on one side and public agencies and industry on the other side? How can we broker knowledge and its flow between stakeholders?