An invisible network of digital technology systems underlies the highly visible networks of roads, waterways, satellites, and power-lines. Increasingly, these systems are becoming the "infrastructure's infrastructure," providing a crucial array of data on network demand, performance, reliability, and security. Digital Infrastructures presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the technological systems that envelop these networks. The book balances analyses of specific civil and environmental infrastructures with broader policy and management issues, including the challenges of using information technology to manage these critical systems under crisis conditions.

Digital Infrastructures addresses not only the technological dimension but, importantly, how social, organizational, and environmental forces affect how information technologies can be used to manage water, power, transport, and telecommunication systems. The book is organized into four sections. First, fundamental themes of policy, management, and technology are presented to frame the domain of digital infrastructures. Second, the way in which information technologies are applied in specific infrastructure sectors (including water, power, transport, and telecom) are reviewed with a focus on critical technological, managerial, and policy issues confronting system planners. Third, cross-cutting themes of economics, earth systems engineering, and international sustainability are examined as alternative systems perspectives for achieving the integration of information technology and infrastructure. Finally, the concluding section looks at some of the new directions and challenges being posed by issues such as homeland security.

Digital Infrastructures is the first integrated treatment of the ways information technology is fundamentally affecting how critical infrastructures are managed. It is geared to provide the new infrastructure professional with state of the art concepts, methods, and examples for use in creating public policies, strategic plans, and new systems. It will be an essential book for upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in infrastructure management, critical infrastructure, environmental systems management, and management of information technology systems.