The infrastructure crisis of 2015. The tripod upon which modern economy supports is: Energy, Transport and Communications We are 'pumping' in new technology, new content and overusing the basic infrastructure. In about 10 to 15 years, the infrastructure is going to show the age much fast and therein lies a potential for catastrophe. We are seeing the point of the Iceberg when we see the blackouts across the world. These are no accidents which occurs once in a while. This is the result of the aging of the infrastructure crumbling. Outdated infrastructure will make the economy inefficient and unproductive as anyone. All gains in productivity will vanish.
Bridges, roads' harbors and river canals can be maintained on a on going basis. Airplanes can be retired since metal fatigue, shows the end of airworthiness. Same for most transport infrastructure: trucks, and rail rolling stock and ships. Here there is not too much problem beyond the lack of ships to transport raw materials which has increased the costs of transport recently.
<<In (California) the 1960s, public works and infrastructure projects constituted nearly 20 percent of state spending. Today, they represent closer to 3 percent of spending,
despite sensational growth that is placing a tremendous burden on aging infrastructure systems. Many public works systems are nearing, or have exceeded, the ends of their expected lives. Cities still rely on water systems dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, and roads and other projects built during the 1950s and 1960s have reached the end of their useful lives and cannot support a population that has doubled since their construction.>>
The more serious problems are energy and telecommunications. Outdated networks are being kept and modern parts added that operates side-by-side with the old technology parts. The electrical grid will need to be fork-lifted in the countries that modernized earlier enough. Nuclear power stations need to be shut down and decommissioned after ending their economic life. Problem will be: Will there be money to re-build knowing that populations will be peaking and economy growing at a slow pace and without savings.
<<The US's last new oil refinery was built in Garyville, La., in 1976....The demand for natural gas is growing 2-1/2 times as fast as the nation's ability to supply it....The electric industry estimates every American will have to pay $100 a year for the next 10 years to get the power system up to the digital age>>
Telecom infrastructure were fork-lifted once every 20 years. Today, no longer, it is kept alive and only the software is upgraded. Copper cable is kept alive by putting several generations of modern and improved boxes at each end. Same goes for fiber optics. The same fiber that is under the ground designed to carry 155Mbit/s is now being used to carry 10Gbit/s and next 40GBit/s.
This is not visible. Also not a problem for small countries like Scandinavian and most European countries. It will be very expensive to countries like Brazil, Canada, Australia and the US which are sparsely populated and depend heavily on infrastructure. |
