Institutional Analysis of Drinking Water Supply Failure: Lessons from Flint, Michigan

摘要

In addition to infrastructure and regulatory controls, safe drinking water systems require effective institutional arrangements and governance to sustain services and guard against failures. Providing these arrangements involves a complex array of legal, political, and cultural factors that confront engineers and managers with responsibility for the systems. These factors do not fit into a neat package for inclusion in educational programs, but they are of critical importance in the planning and management of complex infrastructure systems. An explanation of institutional issues is explained in the context of the 2015 Flint, Michigan, drinking water crisis, which serves as an object lesson to identify lessons learned and the need for explanation in engineering curricula. The crisis offers riveting lessons about failed water governance management systems and how a sociotechnical system failed, including the infrastructure, management, and governance systems. The focus of the paper is on tools for institutional analysis that go beyond technical topics. Current recommendations for the bachelor's degree in engineering do not address greater training in institutional analysis to any great extent. As a minimum, engineering educators can use case analysis to explain to students about the broader impacts of systems they will plan, design, and manage.