Re-envisioning infrastructure: Data as an asset

By Gavin Cotterill | Consulting Director - Asia Pacific, PCSG | Co-Chair Digital Twin Task Force, Smart Cities Council

Leaders from the UK academia, industry and government have called for infrastructure to be re-envisioned through a new white paper, Flourishing Systems.

The paper calls for a fundamental change in how the UK view and run its nation’s infrastructure in the face of climate change and the socio-economic recovery from Covid-19.

The paper calls on the need to develop a systems-based vision of infrastructure with renewed focus on four key areas of People, Connections, Sustainability and Digitalisation.

The interesting part of this document is that Digital is seen as a key pillar in enabling how infrastructure is planned, designed, built, operated and ultimately how services are run for the public.

The key message I took from the paper is that improved decision-making requires that digital assets be properly valued and managed.

This is something infrastructure owners and operators need to better understand that data as an asset is just as an important as the physical asset.