Design and Management of Infrastructures

Programme directors: Prof.dr.ir. M.P.C. Weijnen en Prof.mr.dr. E.F. ten Heuvelhof

Motivation and mission

Currently, many infrastructure sectors are in a process of drastic change. A comparison between the infrastructure sectors reveals that the forces driving change are similar in many ways and have similar origins: liberalisation of markets, privatisation of public utility functions, de- and re-regulation, internationalisation and technological innovation are prominent driving forces of the processes of infrastructure reform. However, the interdependencies between these forces and the interdependencies and interactions between the infrastructure sectors make it difficult to predict and control the outcome of the current transition processes.
In this research programme, we set out 'to develop a generic framework for understanding and steering infrastructure development, enabling users to learn systematically from experiences in other sectors’'Through comparative analysis of infrastructures and developments in the infrastructure sectors, we strive to gain fundamental insight into how technological, economic and institutional change interact in shaping infrastructure development, and in the design criteria for infrastructure networks, market structure and governance models in order to direct infrastructure reform processes in respect of public interests. It is an explicit part of this mission to produce and disseminate new theories, insights, methods and tools to practitioners in the area of infrastructure design, management and regulation, and to stimulate a process of cross-sectoral learning. It is a matter of course that the research results should also find their way to the educational programmes of the Faculty of TPM, both at the undergraduate and the graduate level.

Programme design ->