America just committed $1.2 trillion to fix its infrastructure. We’re still flying blind
Gregg Herrin is Vice President of Water at Bentley Systems.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act authorized $1.2 trillion in total spending. This is the largest infrastructure commitment in modern U.S. history. But money alone won’t solve America’s infrastructure problem. There are approximately 30 million miles of water lines, sewer systems, electrical cables and telecom networks beneath our feet that enable daily life to continue. Most people never think about these things until something goes wrong.
And when things go wrong, the consequences are immediate. The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge caused disruption to one of the East Coast’s most important shipping routes. Sinkholes at LaGuardia delayed hundreds of flights and revealed how vulnerable critical systems could be. In Hawaii, levee failures exposed communities to flooding and long-term damage.
But the biggest warning signs aren’t always the headline-grabbing disasters. Often, infrastructure failures develop slowly, hiding beneath day-to-day operations until the economic and social costs become too great to ignore.
A data center campus in Fayetteville, Georgia, consumed nearly 29 million gallons of water over 15 months through two pipe connections the county didn’t know existed. At the same time, local officials were urging residents to save water during severe drought conditions. Water pressure dropped, but there was no early warning, no clear visibility into the increased demand, and no practical way to intervene before the system was pushed to its limits.
Such pressures may become more common as data centers expand to support artificial intelligence. EPA estimates show that U.S. data centers will use 17.4 billion gallons of water in 2023, and that total could reach 73 billion gallons by 2028.
As these facilities expand into drought-stricken regions such as the American West, this growth will have real consequences for local systems and communities. Water operators need modern tools that provide better visibility to prevent these incidents. A system with real-time metering integration could have instantly captured Fayetteville’s discharge before 29 million gallons were lost.
Real-time response alone is no longer enough. Infrastructure operators also need the ability to predict failures before they occur and evaluate “what if” scenarios before systems are challenged. Digital twin technology already makes this possible. The 17th Street Canal pump station in New Orleans implemented a digital twin to improve decision-making during storm events, helping protect 635,000 people, assets, businesses, and critical industries while strengthening resilience to climate-related floods.
These virtual models allow operators to simulate how infrastructure systems will respond to severe droughts, unexpected population growth, or the addition of a hyperscale data center. It shifts operations from pure break-fix reactions to proactive maintenance.
Predictive models are only as effective as the data behind them. Although operators are collecting more infrastructure data than ever before, this information is often trapped in disconnected systems. Digital twins help solve this problem by bringing these systems together in a unified operational view. Without this visibility, operators remain information-rich but operationally blind; They don’t have a clear, real-time understanding of how their infrastructure systems are performing.
Closing this visibility gap requires policy as well as technology. Policymakers, operators and industry are increasingly working together to develop digital requirements that provide all stakeholders with a clearer understanding of how assets can be managed more effectively. During the recent Infrastructure Week in Washington, D.C., the Housing Transportation and Infrastructure Committee developed the BUILD America 250 Act, which includes a key provision for digital infrastructure. This Act integrates digital delivery into federal transportation policy, helping operators adopt the same digital twin technologies that are transforming the private sector.
Beyond Only modernization, adoption of these predictive tools will help solve the persistent optics problem of infrastructure. Public investment in infrastructure creates the opportunity to strengthen accountability and transparency about how these systems are performing. Taxpayers supporting these major improvements should be able to see how the infrastructure is performing in real time and how these investments increase reliability and resiliency. Policymakers can help accelerate this progress by promoting modern approaches that prioritize visibility, predictive insight, and better long-term outcomes for federally funded projects.
The United States has pledged over half a trillion dollars to rebuild its foundation. The next challenge is to ensure that these investments are smart as well as historical. Although largely invisible to the public, infrastructure increasingly determines America’s economic competitiveness. The question is whether the country can modernize these systems before the next failure forces its hand.
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This story first appeared on: Fortune.com
