Infrastructures appear increasingly strained by myriad environmental factors including emerging and disruptive technologies, climate change, cybertechnologies, political polarization, and ageing assets. At the same time, our critical systems appear rooted in designs and operational principles that emerged in the last century, that are insufficient for today’s challenges. While ample knowledge exists about more desirable infrastructure futures, we appear unable to change these critical systems at pace and scale with their changing environments. This signals that fundamental knowledge and competencies are needed to transform critical systems in the face of growing complexity, and this knowledge may be missing from our current infrastructure approaches. New strategies are needed to navigate infrastructures through accelerating, volatile, and uncertain conditions.

This workshop will create a space for dialogue to identify grand challenges for the infrastructure community, and novel models for confronting the increasingly complex conditions of the Anthropocene. Past workshops by ISSST members have resulted in an Infrastructure Misfits community, a group of innovative infrastructure thinkers dedicated to navigating infrastructure through increasingly complex environments. The Infrastructure Misfits – an (un)society – community has introduced a series of workshops, podcasts, books, and articles to facilitate dialogues around how infrastructures – as technologies, and socio-governmental processes – should transform into the future, including and perhaps most importantly, the barriers to these transformations.

Should a clear set of visions emerge then participants will be invited to submit these visions as articles to a special collection in Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability (ERIS). ERIS has offered to support the special collection and is willing to consider from the workshop commentary and perspective type articles.

More broadly, the goal of the workshop is to create a community of infrastructure leaders that are capable of navigating systems through future complexity. This community will need to be capable of recognizing the increasingly complex nature of infrastructures themselves as well as their environments. They will recognize that technocentric solutions are limited, and that dynamics between socio-governmental and ecological processes are not only relevant but also leverage points in affecting change. Those who participate in the workshop will be brought into the Infrastructure Misfits network and encouraged to continue discussions after ISSST.

1. Is it open to the community or special invite only? Open to community
2. How many people do you expect? 30
3. Will it be full-day? Yes