NSL – Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft ETH Zürich
  • Projects
      • Projects of the Chairs
        • Prof. Dr. Bryan T. Adey | Infrastructure Management
        • Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete | History and Theory of Urban Design
        • Prof. Dr. Kay W. Axhausen | Traffic and Transport Planning
        • Prof. Dr. Francesco Corman | Transport Systems
        • Prof. Christophe Girot | Landscape Architecture
        • Prof. Dr. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey | Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems (PLUS)
        • Prof. Dr. David Kaufmann | Spatial Development and Urban Policy
        • Prof. Hubert Klumpner | Architecture and Urban Design
        • Dr. Anastasios Kouvelas | Traffic Engineering and Control
        • Prof. Dr. Christian Schmid | Sociology
        • Prof. Milica Topalovic | Architecture and Territorial Planning
        • EiR PD Dr. Joris Van Wezemael / Dr. Markus Nollert | Spatial Transformation Laboratories (STL)
        • Prof. Dr. h. c. Günther Vogt | Landscape Architecture
        • ETH Wohnforum – ETH CASE
        • NSL Archive
      • NSL Colloquia – The NSL Colloquia are a bi-annual presentation of exceptional work under a rotating theme determined by the inviting professor.
      • NSL Projects
        • Future Cities Lab Global
        • Urban Potential and Strategies in Metropolitan Territories
 – The Zurich Metropolitan Region as an Example (NFP65)
        • Landscape Visualization and Modeling Lab (LVML)
      • NSL Forum: Pandemie? Mitten im Klimawandel. Was bedeutet das für die räumliche Entwicklung der Schweiz? Ein Dialog.
      • Former Chairs
    Close
  • Teaching
    • Teaching
      • Bachelor and Master Degree Programmes, Department ARCH
      • Bachelor and Master Degree Programmes, Department BAUG
      • MSc in Spatial Development and Infrastructure Systems
      • DAS/CAS Transport Engineering
      • MAS/DAS/CAS Spatial Planning
      • MAS Urban and Territorial Design
      • MAS in Housing
      • Doctoral Programme in Landscape and Urban Studies
      • The teaching component of the NSL seeks to impart the knowledge and skills needed to develop the standard strengths of spatial planning and their interaction as well as the ability to develop strategies for the solution of spatial problems. These are central prerequisites for a responsible and successful exercise of planning functions in the service of the public commonwealth and of private companies. Especially important in fufilling these prerequisites is the quality of university-level education: graduate and post-graduate work as well as professional development in spatial, urban and landscape planning. The ETH Zurich has offered programmes such as continuing education courses and post-graduate programmes (NDS, now MAS) since 1965. The NSL (Network City and Landscape) is responsible for these courses and programmes.
    Close
  • Publications
    • Cover NSL NL 53NSL Newsletter – The NSL brings the experts at ETH Zurich together and also maintains a dialogue with other groups that deal with or are interested in issues relating to cities and landscapes.
    • Diego Cruciat: Tagliamento from Monte di Ragogna. CC BY-SA 3.0Publications of NSL Chairs – A complete list of publications can be reached via the following link, which also includes advanced search capabilities:
      • ETH Zürich Research Collection
    • Cover disP September 2021disP – The Planning Review – The interdisciplinary scientific journal covers the topics of spatial development, urban planning, landscape and environmental planning, landscape architecture, traffic planning, and regional and environmental economics, as well as special issues on specific themes.
      • Publishing in disP – The Planning Review
      • Publisher
      • Book Review Guidelines
      • Editorial Staff
      • Latest Issue
      • facebook
    Close
  • Current
  • Contact
      • en
        • de
        • fr
        • it
      • Search

    • Close

The Interdisciplinary Nature of Planning Interventions on Network Infrastructure in Urban Areas

Interventions must be executed on infrastructure networks in urban areas to ensure that they provide adequate levels of services. The optimal planning of these interventions requires consideration of the work of many experts to appropriately consider the spatial and temporal aspects of the networks, how the networks might be expected to change in the future, and how society might react to inadequate levels of services. Future work to enable the development of optimal intervention programs in the real world, requires research involving not only classical engineers, but also architects, spatial planers, traffic planners, and social scientists. 

Infrastructure networks in urban areas, such as electricity, gas, road, sewer and water distribution networks, are built to provide services to the public. Since these networks deteriorate over time, preventive and corrective interventions must be executed to ensure that they provide the desired levels of services. As disruptions to service normally occur due to both preventive and corrective interventions, infrastructure managers in urban areas are interested in determining an optimal balance between them.

Complex Interventions in Urban Areas

The optimal planning of interventions in urban areas, where there are multiple overlapping infrastructure networks, is significantly more complex than in other situations. It requires consideration of how both the execution of interventions on, and the failure of, one network, may affect the ability of the other networks to provide service. Such modelling includes both spatial and temporal aspects of the existing infrastructure networks, and consideration of how the infrastructure might be expected to change in the future. Both, require the work of groups of experts in different fields. The required experts for the former, include experts on climate change, infrastructure behavior, the use of infrastructure when it is not behaving as expected, and the societal reactions to underperforming infrastructure. The required experts for the latter, include experts on spatial planning and regional development, the ability to adapt infrastructure to changing needs, the use of infrastructure under changing circumstances, and societal reactions to inadequately designed infrastructure.

Researchers in the Infrastructure Management Group are making steps forward to confront the technical challenges of planning interventions optimally in urban areas. These include determining how interventions can be optimally planned on road networks (Lethanh et al., 2014; Lethanh et al., 2016), water distribution networks, rail networks, and simultaneously on multiple networks in urban areas (Kielhauser et al., 2016). The development of truly optimal intervention programs in urban areas in the real world, however, requires not only confronting technical challenges but also societal ones, such as dealing with the competing interests of different infrastructure managers, different political instances, and different stakeholders. Future work, therefore, requires research involving not only classical engineers, but also architects, spatial planers, traffic planners, and social scientists.

Prof. Dr. Bryan T. Adey is the head of the Infrastructure Management Group in the Institute of Construction and Infrastructure Management at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zürich). His research is focused on improving the construction and management of infrastructure by conducting and guiding research that results in the provision of cutting edge frameworks, methodologies, models and tools for the management of infrastructure. Special attention is focused on the improvement of decision making from general planning for entire networks to detailed planning for specific projects. His teaching objectives are to prepare students to be future infrastructure managers, capable of making decisions to ensure that infrastructure is managed to maximize the benefit for society, to ensure that students benefit from the right combination of theoretical knowledge and practical experience within their learning experience, and to help students develop skills useful in both practice and research in the field of infrastructure management, including thinking beyond current state-of-knowledge.

 Kielhauser, Clemens; Adey, BryanT.; Lethanh, Nam (2016): Investigation of a static and a dynamic neighbourhood methodology to develop work programs for multiple close municipal infrastructure networks, Structure and Infrastructure Engineering. Mehr

Lethanh, Nam; Adey, Bryan T.; Sigrist, Manuel (2014): A mixed-integer linear model for optimizing work zone interventions on a transportation network. International Conference on Engineering and Applied Sciences Optimization, Kos Island, Greece, June 4-6.

Lethanh, Nam; Adey, Bryan T.; Burkhalter, Marcel (2016): Determining optimal work-zones on large infrastructure networks in a geographic information system. International Symposium on Infrastructure Asset Management (SIAM), Kyoto, Japan 21-22.

 

Image: Panoramabrücke Sigriswil, aufgenommen von Anne-Marie Weiersmüller.

Share on Facebook
Facebook
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Email this to someone
email
This article has been published in the following newsletter edition:

32 | Dezember 2016: Infrastrukturen

  • The Interdisciplinary Nature of Planning Interventions on Network Infrastructure in Urban Areas
  • Singapore’s first Roundtable on Future District Energy Systems by FCL
  • In the Search of Alternative Models for the Evaluation of Transport Projects
  • Planning the Airport in Paris: From Infrastructural to Strategic Territory
  • Infrastructural Improvements Along the Hamburg–Athens Corridor: A Tool Towards Territorial Cohesion
Kurzmeldungen
  • Eine neue transalpine Eisenbahnlinie: Scuol, Landeck, Mals
  • Das Gleis lebt!
  • Scales of Power
  • Planungsplattform für Hochspannungsleitungen
  • Street Design Meets the Virtual World at the Future Cities Laboratory
Publikationen
  • Isolated intersection control for various levels of vehicle technology: Conventional, connected, and automated vehicles
  • CODE: ATHENS! Railway and City Development in Athens
  • A new rail optimisation model by integration of traffic management and train automation
  • Impact of autonomous vehicles on the accessibility in Switzerland
  • Voreingenommene Erzählungen. Architekturgeschichte als Ideengeschichte
  • Thinking the Contemporary Landscape
  • Territory – On the Development of Landscape and City

Chairs

Prof. Dr. Bryan T. Adey
Prof. Dr. Kay W. Axhausen
Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete
Prof. Dr. Francesco Corman
Prof. Teresa Galí-Izard
Prof. Christophe Girot
Prof. Dr. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey
Prof. Dr. Guillaume Habert
Prof. Dr. David Kaufmann
Prof. Hubert Klumpner
Dr. Anastasios Kouvelas
Dr. Markus Nollert
Prof. Freek Persyn
Prof. Dr. Christian Schmid
Prof. Milica Topalovic
EiR PD Dr. Joris Van Wezemael
Prof. Dr. h. c. Günther Vogt
ETH Wohnforum – ETH CASE

Contact

Address
ETH Zürich
NSL – Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5
HIL H 44.2
8093 Zürich

NSL Director
Director: Prof. Hubert Klumpner
Acting Representative: Prof. Dr. David Kaufmann

NSL Coordination
Claudia Gebert
Telephone: +41 (0)44 633 36 33

Register for the NSL newsletter 

disP Publication Office

Editor-in-Chief
Dr. sc. techn. Martina Koll-Schretzenmayr, Spatial planner ETH/NDS,
Telephone +41 (0)44 633 29 47

Editorial Assistant
Telephone +41 (0)44 633 29 69

Mailing address
ETH Zürich
Redaktion disP
NSL – Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5
HIL H 33.2
8093 Zürich
Fax +41 (0)44 633 12 15
E-Mail

 

NSL Archive (gta)

Research and Bequest Archive for
Swiss Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning

Consultation Requests

Mailing address
ETH Zürich
NSL Archive (gta)
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5
HIL C 65.2
CH-8093 Zurich