Critical infrastructure organisations face persistent challenges in aligning their objectives, strategies, and practices to enable more efficient use of scarce resources. In the Netherlands, space, labour, water, and energy are all under growing pressure. Digitalisation, rising demand, and climate change make the need to collaborate and join forces increasingly urgent. Yet, data sharing remains impeded by low interoperability of asset information, shared labour and contracting is not a common practice and cross-sectoral maintenance planning is still largely confined within single organisations. Without addressing these challenges, opportunities to enhance maintenance efficiency, sustainability, and cross-sector coordination risk remaining unrealized.
In this NWO-funded PhD project, we develop and validate design principles for shared infrastructure control rooms. Through action-oriented research and close engagement with infrastructure partners, it maps existing asset information management practices, identifies barriers to inter-organizational collaboration and data interoperability, and co-develops design principles across sequential pilots of shared control infrastructure rooms. The findings will be synthesised into actionable guidelines that promote collaboration among infrastructure operators, contributing to a holistic framework that enhances interoperability, scalability, and shared resources. Ultimately, this research supports the broader ambition of transforming parallel-operating infrastructure organisations into coordinated actors capable of managing their shared ecosystem together.
