Researcher:
Project Duration: January 2026 – December 2029
Project Partner: Next Generation Infrastructures, Rijkswaterstaat, ProRail, Port of Rotterdam, Alliander, Vittens, Province Noord-Holland
Project Description:
Infrastructure networks form the backbone of economic and societal well-being, facilitating mobility, energy distribution, and access to resources. However, the pressures of climate change, energy transitions, urbanisation, and resource scarcity demand a paradigm shift. The current demand-driven approach to infrastructure governance must evolve into a proactive and transformative governance model. This requires a rethinking of how infrastructure managers, policymakers, and end-users interact to create resilient, future-proof infrastructure systems. As also suggested by the infrastructure turn, infrastructure networks hold the potential to play a pivotal role in societal transitions, but realising this potential requires new ways of thinking and collaboration. SPINES seeks to address this challenge by developing actionable strategies that integrate long-term transformative visions with immediate short-term needs. As a partner in the SPINES project, we aim to understand the emergence of tipping points in infrastructure use patterns by investigating the interaction of infrastructure demand drivers, policy mechanisms and infrastructure use over time. We combine infrastructure performance modelling, agent-based modelling and exploratory modelling to provide a systemic approach to show how infrastructure demand may change due to behavioural changes, how these changes may emerge in the long run through the interplay of social, policy and performance factors, and which benefits different use patterns can provide for infrastructure managers.