NEW YORK STATE WATER RESOURCES INSTITUTE Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences 1123 Bradfield Hall, Cornell University Tel: (607) 255-3034 Ithaca, NY 14853-1901 Fax: (607) 255-2016 http://wri.eas.cornell.edu Email: [email protected] A Prototype Planning Support System for Managing Change in Water Infrastructure Systems in Hudson River and Mohawk River Municipalities Kieran P. Donaghy <[email protected]> Department of City and Regional Planning Cornell University, 106 W. Sibley Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853 Table 1. Types of Interdependence between Critical Infrastructure Systems in Hudson River Communities in Northeast Orange County Types of Interdependence Examples from Northeast Orange County Municipalities Physical Interdependence Water mains underlie streets and railroad tracks. Budgetary Interdependence The scope of transportation improvements and water infrastructure upgrades is constrained by limited capital Budgets. Market Interdependence and Smart-growth-oriented urban regeneration in the City of Newburgh Spatial Economic Competition competes with ex-urban housing development in the Town of Newburgh and the Town of New Windsor. Informational Interdependence For a viable regional water-sharing plan and regional economic development to go forward, multiple stakeholders must share information and craft stable inter-municipal agreements (IMAs). Environmental Interdependence The quality of water in Washington Lake is affected by runoff of new exurban housing developments and new access roads. Abstract We have succeeded in developing component models of a prototype planning support system (PSS) for managing change in water infrastructure systems in Hudson River and Mohawk River municipalities subJect to interdependencies with other infrastructure systems, budget constraints, and principles of smart growth. We have also succeeded in partnering with a Hudson River municipality to develop and demonstrate the usefulness of the PSS in a test-bed application. The PSS when completed will enable users to determine what should be done by whom, when, where and by how much in order to implement water infrastructure repairs and upgrades in Northeast Orange A Prototype Planning Support System for Managing Change in Water Infrastructure systems in Hudson River and Mohawk River Municipalities County (NEOC) that are consistent with transportation and land-use plans promoting smart growth. It also indicates what the economic impacts of the capital investments in NEOC would likely be, based on differing assumptions about the level of expenditures, their source, and how they are financed. The PSS can be used by stakeholders to explore contingent paths between interdependent decisions and identify a feasible set of alternative inter-municipal agreements (IMAs). Three Summary Points of Interest • We have demonstrated that it is possible to examine a spectrum of implications of alternative water and transportation infrastructure repairs and upgrades over multiple periods from a comprehensive regional planning perspective in a PSS. • An implication of the solution of the models in the PSS is that it will be difficult to implement all changes elaborated by existing plans without alternative financial arrangements and stable, mutually acceptable IMAs. • Water and transportation infrastructure investments would appear to favor higher-income households over lower-income households, in the sense of being welfare-improving, indicating that distributional impacts should be explicitly considered in planning infrastructural changes. Keywords: Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Systems, Planning Support System, Smart Growth, Inter-municipal Agreements 1. Introduction Much of the municipal infrastructure built within the last century, including that in many New York State communities has reached the end of its service life and much of the infrastructure needing substantial repair or replacement is water- related. At historical junctures such as this, societies have been confronted with choices to make regarding the lumpy, long-lived investments that infrastructure systems represent. Do they rebuild for a past period, thereby re-imposing or preserving old constraints on land uses and activity patterns, or do they develop new infrastructure systems, embodying new technologies, informed by new principles, and opening up new possibilities for land uses and activity patterns? Perhaps they embrace a combination of these two options. The present situation is complicated further, not only by the interdependence of municipal infrastructure systems and the interdependence of regional municipalities, but also by the need to use infrastructure investments to transition to sustainable lifestyles and, some would argue, to reinvigorate industries in decline. As infrastructure planners and other interested parties confront this reality they will surely ask themselves the following questions: • What interdependent decisions are associated with managing changes in urban infrastructure systems? • What theoretical, methodological, informational, and political resources are available for supporting such decisions? • Who are the stakeholders, what are their interests, and how can they be involved in formulating and implementing comprehensive planning responses on a regional scale? Given the complexity of the relationships between interdependent infrastructure-based networked systems, their jurisdictions, their controllers, and the nature of their financing, it is clear that their will be multiple agents—both public and private—facing this planning problem, that their decisions may have different time frames and may be taken from different perspectives but will surely affect each other, and that the overall infrastructure system (a system of systems) will be a complex adaptive one that is likely to give rise to emergent outcomes that no single ‘network controller’ will have intended. This report was prepared for the New York State Water Resources Institute (WRI) and the Hudson River 2 Estuary program of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, with support from the NYS Environmental Protection Fund. A Prototype Planning Support System for Managing Change in Water Infrastructure systems in Hudson River and Mohawk River Municipalities Perhaps the best we can hope to accomplish in the face of complexity is to identify plans that are compatible within a web of overlapping plans of agents and planning jurisdictions—a feasible set of alternative solutions. In doing so, we will need to employ modeling tools and data bases to impose structure on problems, think through coordinated planning responses, and identify possibly compatible systems management plans. We will also want to avail ourselves of existing plans and studies and the knowledge and insights of an informed citizenry. Planning support systems facilitate implementation of the modeling and data analysis and integration of knowledge bases needed to identify a feasible set of alternative solutions to major infrastructure planning problems. The purpose of the present project, supported by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Hudson River Estuary Program through the New York State Water Resources Institute, is to develop a planning support system (PSS) for managing change in water infrastructure systems in Hudson River and Mohawk River municipalities, subject to interdependencies with other infrastructure systems, budget constraints, and principles of smart growth to which New York State is committed. In undertaking this project, we are partnering with representatives of a Hudson River municipality, the City of Newburgh, to develop and demonstrate the usefulness of the PSS in a test-bed application. 1.1 Modeling infrastructure systems to support planning decisions. Modeling infrastructure systems to support planning decisions poses numerous challenges. Terry Friesz and his colleagues in engineering at Pennsylvania State University (Friesz et al, 2007) suggest that it is helpful to view infrastructure systems involved with the movement of goods, passengers, information, water and energy as general transportation networks. Moreover, they argue that, to the extent such networked systems are interdependent, they should be viewed together as a system of systems. (See also Sheffi, 1985 and Nagurney and Dong, 2002.) Friesz et al (2007) view the five main sources of interdependence between generalized transportation networks as being physical interdependence, budgetary interdependence (when public financing is involved), market interdependence and spatial economic competition, informational interdependence, and environmental interdependence and congestion externalities. (See Table 1 for examples of these types of interdependence from Northeast Orange County municipalities.) The practical challenge of implementing a system of systems framework in infrastructure planning exercises is to express the interdependencies between the infrastructure networks mathematically so that models supporting infrastructure planning can be formulated and solved. One way to proceed is to represent infrastructure systems as multi-layered infrastructure networks with constraints on how the networks are coupled. The layers can then be arranged in hierarchies reflecting their engineering and societal functions and the resulting multilayered coupling of infrastructure networks will constitute a system of systems. Friesz et al (2007) remark that the over-all performance of a system of systems (SOS) “can be significantly