By Dr Seosamh Costello, The University of Auckland
The New Zealand Government recently released its Thirty Year Infrastructure Plan, through Treasury’s National Infrastructure Unit. The vision, by 2045, is to have infrastructure that is resilient and coordinated, and contributes to a strong economy and high living standards. Although the plan includes most national infrastructure assets, to provide some context for this forum, the highway component of the nation’s infrastructure comprises of almost 11,000 km of state highway network and almost 84,000 km of local roads.
The identified challenges over the next thirty years include aging assets and infrastructure networks, affordability constraints, productivity gaps, climate change and availability of natural resources, among others. The response to these challenges will require a step change in how New Zealand approaches infrastructure. Of interest to this forum is the fact that one of the three key responses is ‘Strengthening Asset Management’.
The specific actions which are set to anchor this strengthening of asset management are:
- Develop metadata standards for roads, buildings and water infrastructure
- Establish regional centres of excellence or similar arrangements for collating and making available the data obtained through shared metadata standards.
Clearly, therefore, the government see data availability as one of the keys to the success of the infrastructure plan. I will go one step further and say that its success relies not just on the data itself but how this data can be converted into useful information to support more effective and efficient decision making.
For more information, please contact Dr Seosamh Costello at s.costello@auckland.ac.nz or read the full document at http://www.infrastructure.govt.nz/plan/2015/