ITRC five years on: a new MISTRAL journey begins

Since 2011 the ITRC has developed the world’s first national infrastructure system-of-systems model, NISMOD. ITRC’s recently launched £5.3m MISTRAL programme will build on this success.

On Monday 23 May at the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), London, over one hundred high profile government and industry stakeholders gathered to celebrate the launch of the ITRC’s exciting new MISTRAL: Multi-scale InfraSTRucture systems AnaLytics programme and recently published book, The Future of National Infrastructure: A System-of-Systems Approach.

Professor Jim Hall speaks at the ITRC-MISTRAL launch | Photo by Julian Cottee

The ITRC has been awarded £5.3 million of funding from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council for another five years of research. The aim of the MISTRAL (Multi-scale InfraSTRucture systems AnaLytics) programme is to develop and demonstrate a highly integrated analytics capability to inform strategic infrastructure decision making across scales, from local to global. MISTRAL will thereby radically extend the ITRC’s pioneering infrastructure systems analysis capability.

At the launch, Professor Jim Hall reported on the ITRC’s interim results in providing the analytical framework to the National Needs Assessment (NNA) led by Sir John Armitt. The NNA aims to inform the decisions of the National Infrastructure Commission which the media has been covering closely. The ITRC was delighted to welcome keynote speaker Lord Adonis, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, and Keith Clarke, ICE Vice president, who also spoke.

“Five years ago, when we started on the ITRC journey, proposing theory, methodology and network models that stretched from the household to the globe, and from the UK to different national contexts would not have been credible. Now, thanks to what we have achieved in ITRC, the opportunity for multi-scale modelling is coming into sight.” Professor Jim Hall, Director of the Environmental Change Institute, and ITRC lead.