Our Nation’s infrastructure provides the economic and societal lifeline to move people and goods, while protecting the environment and supporting the essential supply chains and services that anchor the $18 trillion U.S. economy.  Unfortunately the 2017 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure released by the American Society of Civil Engineers  (http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org) scores U.S. infrastructure with an overall grade of D+. In addition, much of our Nation’s infrastructure was designed and constructed decades ago, prior to complex and dynamic changes occurring in population, demographics, and climate (Zimmerman et al., 2008). All this has led many public and private entities to call for investment in, and rethinking how we manage, our Nation’s infrastructure.

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Students will be provided education and research training and apprenticeship to rethink, redesign, and revitalize two of our Nation’s poorly graded critical and interdependent infrastructures: transportation and water.  It is estimated that over the next decade, $1.5 trillion in investment is needed for the transportation sector (ASCE 2017) and $632 billion for the water sector (WWI 2018). Transportation and water are two of the critical infrastructures identified by the U.S. government that are so vital that their breakdown or destruction would have a debilitating effect on national security, economic development, public health, and safety (Presidential Policy Directive PPD-21).  These two infrastructures demonstrate multiple dependencies and share characteristics that include dominant public ownership (versus energy and telecommunications that are dominated by private ownership) and the fact that state and local government spending (not federal) accounts for the majority of capital (62%) and operations and maintenance (88%) expenditures (CBO 2015).