Perspectives in Participatory Infrastructure Management

Abstract

An enlightened viewpoint in infrastructure management is put forward whereby institutional arrangements and physical facilities, as well as parts of the natural environment, are systematically coordinated to serve the common needs of different stakeholders in society in a sustainable fashion. A pressing issue in infrastructure management is how to encourage cooperation among divergent stakeholders who envision different alternatives to infrastructure development, management and renewal. Accordingly, requirements for public participation in infrastructure management in North America are discussed. Their policy and governance implications are also discussed including possible utilization in Japan. To facilitate conflict resolution, a range of techniques designed for handling multiple participant-multiple criteria problems are suggested.

Systems methodologies in Vitae Systems of Systems

“…Professor Norio Okada and his research team in Japan, first at Tottori University and later within the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University, have completed high quality research on challenging topics such as regional planning, environmental and water resources management, allocation of costs and benefits, mitigation of natural disasters and risk assessment. Collaborative research projects between Canadian and Japanese researchers produced publications on subjects including conflicts with misperceptions (Okada et al, 1985), conflict analysis (Okada et al, 1988), regulation of pollutant discharges into lakes (Kilgour et al, 1988), compliance to environmental regulations (Fukuyama et al, 1994(Fukuyama et al, , 2000 and participatory infrastructure management (Okada et al, 2006).…”