Once in a (technical) lifetime

Abstract

In order to keep the hydraulic infrastructure system in the Netherlands from deteriorating, large investments will have to be done in the near future. Decision-support frameworks help in making the right investment decisions for infrastructure that is intended to stand for a hundred years. Such a long lifetime brings forth a high level of uncertainty, regarding climate change as well as its impact on interdependence. So far, most of the adaptive decision-support
frameworks do look at climate change uncertainty, but do not consider interdependence as a distinctive factor between design alternatives. This research presents a first impulse to incorporate climate change uncertainty and interdependence into the decision-making process. Under the scope of a case study, the renewal of a pumping station, relevant interdependencies are identified. Next to the original design alternatives, new design alternatives are created based on the theory of Adaptivity, Engineering Options and Modularity. The influence of the alternatives on the interdependencies is assessed, and their life cycle costs are calculated. The findings are presented in a proposal for a decision-support framework. This research shows that incorporating interdependence and climate change uncertainty makes inherently flexible design alternatives more desirable than static design alternatives. For the identified interdependencies, the adaptive design alternatives have a more positive effect. Also, the costs of the adaptive design alternatives are continuously lower than the static design alternatives.