A National Research Agenda for Intelligent Infrastructure: 2021 Update

TL;DR

This paper updates the national research agenda for intelligent infrastructure, emphasizing the importance of sustained federal investment in technologies to enhance safety, resilience, and social equity, especially in light of recent societal challenges.

Contribution

It synthesizes previous whitepapers and highlights emerging themes where intelligent infrastructure can address major societal issues, providing strategic research investment recommendations.

Findings

Identifies key themes for intelligent infrastructure's role in societal challenges.

Highlights the need for computing research investments.

Provides a strategic research agenda for national infrastructure.

Abstract

Strategic, sustained Federal investments in intelligent infrastructure will increase safety and resilience, improve efficiencies and civic services, and broaden employment opportunities and job growth nationwide. The technologies that comprise intelligent infrastructure can also provide keys to solving some of the most vexing challenges we face today, including confronting future pandemics and natural disasters, achieving sustainability and energy efficiency goals, and advancing social justice. Enabling those technologies effectively will require investment in the associated computing research as well, beyond and in concert with the basic building projects. In 2017, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) produced a series of intelligent infrastructure whitepapers, and in 2020 CCC issued a set of companion whitepapers on closely related topics. Here we briefly survey those earlier works, and then highlight four themes of rising national prominence where intelligent infrastructure can also play an enabling role, driven by experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic and the social justice movement. We conclude with recommendations for the necessary research investments.