National infrastructure is as much a priority in countries with a large stock of ageing infrastructural assets as it is for rapidly industrialising economies. Increasing attention is being paid to the risk and opportunities that the growing interdependence between infrastructural systems brings. However, there is no current methodology to enable long-term planning and future performance assessment of interdependent infrastructural systems. This paper makes the case for a long-term, cross-sectoral approach to analysing and planning the performance of national infrastructure systems. Such an approach is required to develop credible long-term visions for infrastructure provision and to analyse system performance across a range of possible futures. A preliminary version of a system-of-systems analysis for the UK is presented as an example. The implementation of a comprehensive, model-based approach is currently well under way.

National infrastructure systems (energy, transport, digital communications, water, and waste) provide essential services to society. Although for the most part these systems developed in a piecemeal way, they are now an integrated and highly interdependent "system of systems." However, understanding the long-term performance trajectory of national infrastructure has proved to be very difficult because of the complexity of these systems (in physical and institutional terms) and because there is little tradition of thinking cross-sectorally about infrastructure system performance. Here, a methodology is proposed for analyzing national multisectoral infrastructure systems performance in the context of uncertain futures, incorporating interdependencies in demand across sectors. Three contrasting strategies are considered for infrastructure provision (capacity intensive, capacity constrained, and decentralized) and multiattribute performance metrics are analyzed in the context of low, medium, and high demographic and economic growth scenarios. The approach is illustrated using Great Britain and provides the basis for the development and testing of long-term strategies for national infrastructure provision. It is especially applicable to mature industrial economics with a large stock of existing infrastructure and challenges of future infrastructure provision.

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Food security remains a global challenge, particularly in low-income countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa, one in four are undernourished, and the region has the highest prevalence of hunger in the world. Innovations in low cost greenhouse design have the potential to contribute to increased food security, particularly in areas where global climate change is creating additional variability in local weather patterns. This paper describes the preliminary design of a greenhouse that uses open source control systems. This design takes advantage of the decreasing cost and size of sensors to automate systems that have the potential to increase the efficiency and yield of greenhouses.