Sustainable Societal Infrastructures: A Resilient Approach to Prevent Conflicting Claims of Drinking Water and Other Infrastructures

• Main Authors: Ritsche Anne Kloosterman, Wijnand Veeneman, Jan Peter van der Hoek
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-01-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: societal infrastructures; sustainability; conflicting spatial claims; design principles; drinking water protection zones; groundwater; ijssel; zwolle; railroad; governance
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/3/785

Societal infrastructures are the lifeblood of societies, and the sustainability of infrastructures is very important. Societal infrastructures can experience conflicting spatial claims with other societal infrastructures, disturbing the sustainable situation. The objective of this paper is to design large infrastructures, with a focus on the Drinking Water Infrastructure (DWI), in a more sustainable way by using the resilience concept. To study this, a case study was done in the Netherlands, where an overlap is present between the DWI and the protection zones, and a new railroad and water safety measures in the river IJssel. The case showed that conflicting infrastructures are inflexible and unable to adapt to change due to several reasons in the governance and in the infrastructure system itself. The case was useful for identifying eight design principles to prevent conflicting claims between large infrastructures.