Sustainable, networked, intelligent infrastructures: current approaches, scenarios and data regimes

Important sustainability issues, potentials and risks exist at the nexus of urban and infrastructure development. The project will highlight the digitization of infrastructure systems in urban areas. An important issue here is the potential of digitization for environmental protection through new, innovative and smart approaches and possibilities of control through ICT.

In many cases, however, it is still difficult to grasp what further technological and organizational developments digitization will bring and what concrete effects and opportunities are associated with it. In particular, the ecological and social effects are still largely unclear, and evidence of the effects on energy and resource use, for example, is generally not available. Likewise, a link to sustainability goals and the protection of the environment and natural resources is usually not established.

The research project will start here and investigate the question of what potential the digitization of infrastructures in settlement areas offers for the environment and in what form it can be made useful for environmental protection. In the context of sustainable spatial development, the potential for ensuring services of general interest and equal living conditions will also be taken into account.