Financing sustainable infrastructure: Reconciling disaster and traditional financial resources

Infrastructure investment is critical to sustainable infrastructure. The often diverse infrastructure funding sources and levels are evaluated here. The diversity reflects differences and uncertainties in goals under normal and emergency conditions as well as funding availability. For example, for Hurricane Sandy, infrastructure funding drew from special appropriations, disaster relief, mutual assistance agreements, capital budgets, philanthropy, and insurance. The approaches applied here draw from selected public financial databases to understand variability of financing attributes for different infrastructure goals. First, selected funds for (1) traditional capital budgeting/government processes; and (2) emergency funding and allocations before and after weather-related disasters are identified and compared. Second, different funding sources are identified along with patterns and trends in national, state and local public funding levels and types of infrastructure funded (e.g., gray/green). Third, infrastructure financing characteristics are evaluated in the context of infrastructure goals and their indicators. Goals and indicators include operational performance, service quality, social equity, cost, environmental concerns, vulnerability, resilience, experience with extreme weather, the size, scale and geographic coverage of projects, support of proximate land development, and uncertainty. Sustainability-focused infrastructure indicators are drawn from recent compilations, e.g., the National Academies and National Climate Assessment. The sensitivity of the types, levels and distribution of financial resources to infrastructure goals and related indicators is emphasized. This research provides insights into and implications for infrastructure financing under different conditions and objectives as inputs to financial decision-making.