What is Infrastructure?
Infrastructure sustains our world. As the interface between people and our planet, infrastructure provides the facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of our society and the well-being of its people. At the same time, infrastructure must play a leading role in managing our natural resources, improving the quality of the air, soil, and water, developing clean sources of energy, and protecting both society and the environment from harm, whether it is natural or man-made. Infrastructure acts to maintain a balance between the demands of a global population and the capacity of the environment to meet those demands for generations to come. It sustains our society and our environment.
Who sustains it?
It is the infrastructure professionals—the engineers, architects, IT and project managers, fabricators, contractors, and owner-operators who design, build, and operate the world’s infrastructure—those professionals who will leverage technology, best practices, and global collaboration to achieve true innovation in infrastructure. That kind of innovation will be required to develop new sources of clean and renewable energy, reduce our carbon footprint, and promote higher standards of living throughout the world.
Bentley is committed to sustaining the professions who make infrastructure possible. It is a commitment demonstrated through the breadth and depth of Bentley’s applications and professional services, through innovative subscriptions tailored to the business cycles of user organizations, and through fostering of best practices with learning and professional networking communities.
Sustaining Our Society
Infrastructure is absolutely vital to all economic and social activities. Sustaining our society involves these functions of infrastructure:
- Meeting fundamental human needs by providing clean drinking water and sanitation, shelter, and access by way of roads and bridges to health, education, occupations, and other key services;
- Improving quality of life by enabling commerce, mobility, energy, and communications;
- Improving safety and security to protect against, and recover from, unexpected events or pressures—natural and man-made—that threaten life or property.
Sustaining Our Environment
Global challenges to the earth’s environment include the long-term availability of nonrenewable resources, concentrations of pollution and waste from human activity, and climate change.
Infrastructure’s contributions include:
- Increasing bio-capacity by taking advantage of natural energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal; expanding the earth’s ability to absorb waste by increasing green space; remediating the impact of prior human activity through projects such as hazardous waste recovery and disposal; and treatment of polluted water;
- Reducing ecological footprint by minimizing greenhouse gas emissions through building designs with “green” materials and a greater degree of natural cooling, heating, and lighting; minimizing detrimental environmental impact through new facilities designed to produce less polluting waste; and extending the life and uses of existing infrastructure assets;
- Making wise use of nonrenewable resources through more efficient consumption, more efficient production, and expanding resource supplies.