[Themaintainers] New Forthcoming Piece Identifying Institutional Challenges Facing the U.S. Bridge System

[Scott Knowles]

Looks very good, thanks--sgk


Scott Gabriel Knowles, Ph.D.
Drexel University
Professor and Head, Department of History
3141 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA, 19104
Phone: 646-263-9661


Poverty is the slowest disaster.

________________________________
From: themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu <themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu> on behalf of Lee Vinsel <lee.vinsel at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2018 1:27:37 PM
To: Themaintainers
Cc: Daniel Armanios; Jaison D. Desai
Subject: [Themaintainers] New Forthcoming Piece Identifying Institutional Challenges Facing the U.S. Bridge System

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to share an announcement that Carnegie Mellon professor Daniel Armanios and his student Jaison Desai made about a forthcoming publication on bridge infrastructure. A lot of people kvetch and moralize about the state of infrastructure - me included - but studying the matter and how it impacts lives empirically is much harder. Daniel and his students have been creating a number of novel (often mixed) methods to get at the issue. This paper is one example, and I look forward to reading it.

Daniel and Jaison have said that they'd be happy to field questions on here or chat via email if anyone has thoughts.

Best,

Lee


Dearest Colleagues and Mentors:

I wanted to send all of you an email to share with you our new forthcoming publication in the Journal of Infrastructure Systems that we thought may interest all of you: https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/%28ASCE%29IS.1943-555X.0000451<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fascelibrary.org%2Fdoi%2Fabs%2F10.1061%2F%2528ASCE%2529IS.1943-555X.0000451&data=02%7C01%7Csgk23%40drexel.edu%7C68e48a13d85f4ba5bd5108d62ed5ba13%7C3664e6fa47bd45a696708c4f080f8ca6%7C0%7C0%7C636747892822452622&sdata=gX6%2FMyzoDIZ79OivkZSN3R8klPYXffWK%2Fc2LPnbg%2BKE%3D&reserved=0>. This was spearheaded by my advisee Jaison Desai who recently graduated and is now back with the US Army working in their Cyber Command group.

In this piece, we try to understand a simple challenge - given we have very capable engineering systems that are equipped to diagnose and remediate outdated infrastructure, why do some of these systems still persist and for so long? In this piece, we argue that perhaps these challenges may not just be technological but also institutional.

To advance these arguments, we reconceptualize outdated infrastructure systems as "institutional relics". They are "institutional" in that these systems are designed with the best standards and professional norms of the time. They are "relics" in that these choices are built right into the physical properties of the bridge, and as these standards and norms change, these systems persist with now outdated design standards and norms. Using panel data from the National Bridge Inventory from 1992-2012 (N= 666,206-716,436 bridges/year) and bridge clearance heights as a bridge property that has experienced standards changes over time, we identify and find support for two forms of relics - regulative and normative. Regulative is when an infrastructure system has been built prior to a major standard reform such that this policy now renders this system outdated. Normative is when local engineering norms and priorities conflict with national ones such that an infrastructure system built in a certain area is also likely to reflect particular local rather than more general national priorities. These effects persist even when controlling for financing available for such projects, bridge deck, superstructure, and substructure condition ratings, bridge material and design, amongst other factors.

The main engineering and sociological implications of this piece is that for typical updated infrastructure, longevity is good. However, when these systems no longer reflect modern standards (i.e. become relics), such longevity may actually become a liability. Our approach here uses sociological theory to help bridge engineers identify additional metrics - such as year built, not necessarily age, and bridge location and owner - to further target limited infrastructure funds towards bridges whose remediation present just technical and economic but also social costs. Moreover, we also show how such theory and analysis could help inform other infrastructure system trends such as scour remediation and the location of load postings where there has been similar such issues as those identified here. The key takeaway is bridge managers need to consider metrics that better capture not just current structural needs but also factors that may have changed at the time when the bridge was initially constructed. At the same time, this piece is a nice initial foray to address key outstanding questions in institutional theory, namely while we increasingly understand how institutional systems persist or change, we have less understanding of how these systems are decommissioned and/or replaced.

Given its unusual journal outlet placement (a sociologically driven piece in a civil engineering journal), we are so excited about the potential of this piece to further spur more scholarly dialog between organizational sociology and civil engineering that many of you helped advance in recent years and whose shoulders we stand on!

Sincerely,

Jaison & Daniel

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Daniel Armanios
Assistant Professor
Department of Engineering and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Baker Hall 126B2
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Phone: 412-268-7039
Email: darmanios at cmu.edu<mailto:darmanios at cmu.edu>
Website: http://www.cmu.edu/epp/people/faculty/daniel-armanios.html<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cmu.edu%2Fepp%2Fpeople%2Ffaculty%2Fdaniel-armanios.html&data=02%7C01%7Csgk23%40drexel.edu%7C68e48a13d85f4ba5bd5108d62ed5ba13%7C3664e6fa47bd45a696708c4f080f8ca6%7C0%7C0%7C636747892822452622&sdata=Qrzryw92h7tVPMFHAak2KIltjlIp8ROoSn3bootCqUA%3D&reserved=0>

--
Assistant Professor
Department of Science, Technology, and Society
Virginia Tech
leevinsel.com<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fleevinsel.com&data=02%7C01%7Csgk23%40drexel.edu%7C68e48a13d85f4ba5bd5108d62ed5ba13%7C3664e6fa47bd45a696708c4f080f8ca6%7C0%7C0%7C636747892822452622&sdata=1yE0%2BmtjMt0ARYLVQper6AaT%2FustVL3D9i0H%2FlvQkug%3D&reserved=0>
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