What makes Infrastructure 'smart'?

As our nation’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill works its way through government, it has me thinking about what differentiates smart infrastructure from the traditional infrastructure that’s supported us for so long.?

According to Oxford, infrastructure is “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.” So, what transforms this foundation into a 'smart' infrastructure?

Clearly, it starts with digitalization and data that, when analyzed and applied to operational goals, can help us make better, faster decisions. However, when tasked with choosing one word to describe this shift to 'smart', it’s connection – intertwining the real and digital worlds across energy systems, buildings and industries in a way that’s unlike anything we’ve done before.

Being 'smart' means foundations are no longer siloed and static. Instead, the power, technology and physical structures we rely on are now joined in a way that’s interactive, flexible, intuitive and highly responsive.

Being 'smart' means saying goodbye to inefficient buildings operating on power from a single, centralized source that’s vulnerable to severe weather and outages. It means creating smaller, highly agile grids capable of communicating with one another and monitoring and responding to their own capacity and the needs of the spaces they serve, for a safer, more sustainable and efficient future.

Inside buildings, it means creating ecosystems that interact with people and their environments, learning and adapting to changing conditions to keep occupants comfortable, stakeholders satisfied, and the planet protected for the long term.

The bottom line is, to be 'smart' you must connect – to people, the planet and future possibilities. I’m proud to say that by creating and implementing solutions that join the real and digital worlds, we’re helping the world do just that.