Sustainable Infrastructure Systems: Planning and Operations

How can we repair and rebuild the infrastructure that adapts to the tumultuous challenges of an uncertain future?

In countries around the globe, debilitated infrastructure—or a complete lack thereof—causes outages, puts human safety at risk, and leads to the loss of thousands of working hours and their subsequent economic impact. And as regions around the world deal with the effects of the climate crisis, this new era will require new methods and a new approach to repairing and rebuilding infrastructure in a more sustainable, adaptable way.

Sustainable Infrastructure Systems: Planning and Operations, with curriculum developed and taught by MIT faculty, is delivered in collaboration with Global Alumni. Contact Global Alumni for more information about this program:

• professionalprograms@mit.edu or
• call:+ 1 (857) 766 8188 USA

Global Alumni is an ed-tech company that collaborates with institutions to manage enrollments (including all payment services and invoicing), technology, and participant support. 

The skills and expertise on offer in this course can be employed throughout multiple industries, including water, energy, transportation, agriculture, and public policy. Throughout this course you will:

• Examine systems theory as a tool throughout the conception, analysis, and design of technological systems operating in modern societies and embedded within the natural environment
• Explore metrics and evaluation methods for determining the sustainability of the different components of systems
• Discover life-cycle assessments (LCAS) and life-cycle sustainability assessments (LCSAs) to identify and develop new methods for boosting sustainability through multi-industry systems
• Map out interactions between components, identifying feedback and potential unintended consequences, as well as system lock-in
• Compute life-cycle value using expected net-present value and other sustainability-based value metrics
• Determine water, energy, and agricultural sector resource linkages in a particular region and extract insights relevant for local policy and planning

Links and Resources

News/Articles:

• Why Sustainability is Key to the Future of Professional Education
  With tightening environmental regulations in a number of global markets—and with people beginning to experience the impacts of climate change in their everyday lives—sustainability has become a top-of-mind concern for companies across sectors. But many business leaders lack the foundational sustainability-related knowledge needed to drive change within their organizations.

This course is designed for professionals from an array of backgrounds and fields, including: 

• C-suite executives and mid-to-senior-level managers looking to develop an understanding of the concepts and key definitions of systems theory and its relation to infrastructure development and engineering. 
• Policymakers and development agencies who are interested in gaining insights into sustainable infrastructure improvements and development to support economic growth while working toward targets such as the UN SDGs. 
• Engineers and technical professionals who are committed to understanding the benefits of utilizing technology to develop sustainable infrastructure systems to enhance our global quality of life. 
• Consultants who are seeking to provide their clients with innovative and sustainable infrastructure solutions for business problems while demonstrating credibility and capability through a respected course. 
• Finance leaders and economists who are interested in the balance of macroeconomic principles and environmental, societal, and governance (ESG) criteria and investment.