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Infrastructure

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Business

   Infrastructure, most generally, is a set of interconnected structural
   elements that provide the framework supporting an entire structure. The
   term has diverse meanings in different fields, but is perhaps most
   widely understood to refer to roads, and sewers. These various elements
   may collectively be termed civil infrastructure, municipal
   infrastructure, or simply public works, although they may be developed
   and operated as private-sector or government enterprises. In other
   applications, infrastructure may refer to information technology,
   informal and formal channels of communication, software development
   tools, political and social networks, or shared beliefs held by members
   of particular groups. Still underlying these more general uses is the
   concept that infrastructure provides organizing structure and support
   for the system or organization it serves, whether it is a city, a
   nation, or a corporation.

Origin

   The word seems to have originated in 19th century France, and
   throughout the first half of the 20th century was used to refer
   primarily to military installations. The term came to prominence in the
   United States in the 1980s following publication of America in Ruins
   (Choate and Walter, 1981), which initiated a public-policy discussion
   of the nation’s “infrastructure crisis,” purported to be caused by
   decades of inadequate investment and poor maintenance of public works.

   That public-policy discussion was hampered by lack of a precise
   definition for infrastructure. A U. S. National Research Council (NRC)
   committee cited Senator Stafford, who commented at hearings before the
   Subcommittee on Water Resources, Transportation, and Infrastructure;
   Committee on Environment and Public Works; that “probably the word
   infrastructure means different things to different people." The NRC
   panel then sought to rectify the situation by adopting the term "public
   works infrastructure," referring to "...both specific functional
   modes-- highways, streets, roads, and bridges; mass transit; airports
   and airways; water supply and water resources; wastewater management;
   solid-waste treatment and disposal; electric power generation and
   transmission; telecommunications; and hazardous waste management--and
   the combined system these modal elements comprise. A comprehension of
   infrastructure spans not only these public works facilities, but also
   the operating procedures, management practices, and development
   policies that interact together with societal demand and the physical
   world to facilitate the transport of people and goods, provision of
   water for drinking and a variety of other uses, safe disposal of
   society's waste products, provision of energy where it is needed, and
   transmission of information within and between communities."
   (Infrastructure for the 21st Century, Washington, D.C.: National
   Academy Press, 1987)

   In subsequent years the word has grown in popularity and been applied
   with increasing generality to suggest the internal framework
   discernible in any technology system or business organization. The term
   “critical infrastructure” has been widely adopted to distinguish those
   infrastructure elements that, if significantly damaged or destroyed,
   would cause serious disruption of the dependent system or organization.
   Storm or earthquake damage leading to loss of certain transportation
   routes in a city (for example, bridges crossing a river), could make it
   impossible for people to evacuate and for emergency services to
   operate; these routes would be deemed critical infrastructure.
   Similarly, an on-line reservations system might be critical
   infrastructure for an airline.

Rural infrastructure

   Rural infrastructure differs in many ways from urban infrastructure.
   While publicly controlled assets critical to human survival exist in
   rural areas much as they do in urban areas, transport and utilities
   tend to be much less extensive and relied on less by residents. Other
   municipal services may also be reduced, e.g. nature's services may be
   relied upon for potable water drawn from private wells, while other
   private infrastructural capital, e.g. a dam or canal or irrigation
   ditch, may be relied upon instead of public means of water diversion
   and supply. There may also be much more reliance on community emergency
   response teams such as volunteer fire fighters.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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