Infrastructure in a Box
Next: The Unfactory (new topic)
The core aim of this post series is to validate that a decentralised, resilient model of living and co-operation is possible. So that essential goods are produced locally but at the same time there is global co-operation.
Let’s do a small finger exercise how we could help that with current technology.
Introduction
The basic infrastructure in many parts of the world needs improvement. Informal settlements are among the neediest.
According to WHO, over 2 billion people live in water-stressed countries, which is expected to be exacerbated in some regions as result of climate change and population growth. Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces.
According to the latest IEA data, the number of people around the world who live without electricity is set to rise by nearly 20 million in 2022, reaching nearly 775 million, the first global increase since the IEA began tracking the numbers 20 years ago.
Many more people live in areas with unreliable electricity or cannot pay for it.
According to ITU, estimated 37 per cent of the world’s population, that is, 2.9 billion people have still never used the Internet.
Many more live in areas with poor data network coverage or very high network costs compared to their monthly earning / salary level.
There is need to provide access to basic infrastructure services in an affordable manner. Traditional approach to providing infrastructure is capital heavy, reguiring large upfront investments and requires deep expertise. Many municipalities and other communities lack the needed capital for these investments nor do they have access to workforce that has the required skill level as there is in general lack of skilled labor and more affluent cities can pay higher salaries. Accordingly, MNOs do not provide coverage by building macro base stations to areas where the number of paying (ability to pay) customers is low in the starting point. This increases digital divide and left out customers who could be able to pay internet services after they have got infrastructural settings to start earning and create new business opportunities.
Thus, there is need for a modular approach that requires
Small initial investment compared to traditional approach
Extensible and scalable in small steps
Manageable by ordinary people, not technical experts
As a result, heavy infrastructure installation and upkeep needs to be consumerised.
Vision
The vision is to create a replicable solution blueprint for self-sufficient life, food production in particular, but not limited.
The approach consists of standardized modules for different essential services such as:
Electricity production
Private Mobile Network and Internet
Water purification
Food growing in containers
Cold storage for fresh produce
Modular Health Clinic
Education
Sanitation
Other digital services
Digital embassy
Community self-governance
The whole system contains also a comprehensive management system collecting fault and performance data and having functionalities for root-cause analysis, configuration and reporting
The proposed system consists of two key parts:
Solution architecture that supports interchangeable modules from different vendors. This means we support traditional approaches and future deployments may have components from different ecosystem parties
Pretested and verified products from a fleet of vendors as open source/open design variants
As one diagram the system can be described as:
As the standardized modules are pre-made and pre-integrated so they work with other modules and the management system, solutions are easy to set up. That’s why the concept can be called infrastructure in a box (IIBO).
Rationale
The core of the approach is really food security. In the post-US world, the US navy is no longer protecting the international sea routes and no one else has the capacity for that. Logistic chains are being eroded and animosity between superpower is speeding up the balkanization of the world. Moreover, productive capacity is being weaponized to hurt the perceived rival either directly or indirectly. Access to food, fertilizers and energy are unfortunately used.
Emerging markets with Africa in particular are especially vulnerable. This has tendency to lead to large mass migrations towards Europe with political implications and unrest.
The approach is to deploy solar cells in areas where sun is plentiful, utilize the energy to capture nitrogen for nitrogen-based fertilizers and complete the mix with mission critical components such as water (for people and plants), cold storage (keep fresh), education (including agricultural know-how), connectivity (for information access, reach to markets and bank access). Optionally with automated greenhouse containers and health clinics.
This approach empowers local communities to self-sufficiency and provides all the essentials for modern life.
In addition, this project develops a new ammonia economy by connecting leading EU and AU institutions and businesses, spark the carbon-neutrality of the energy sector, and enable affordable and secure electricity access in the AU.
Architecture
How would you build such a system?
Integration architecture
Each product typically exposes a programmatic interface for managing the system. The native interfaces tend to all be different from each other and have a multitude of functionalities that are not needed on an umbrella level.
Ideally there would be a standard way of exposing capabilities but each vertical tends to have their own standards and vendors want to meet their customers’ needs leading to extensions or own vendor approaches. This is a good thing as it promotes innovation and adaptability to customer needs.
For a holistic view, a unified approach is needed. Unified approach means that whether you are interested in alarms from solar power generation or water purification, the programmatic call is always the same, naming of parameters is unified and they are always represented in the same way (say temperature always in Celsius).
In our approach we achieve this with a mediator that adapts to a varied landscape of vendor approaches and exposes a simplified and unified interface to the management system.
Integration can be done locally from the module or if the vendor does not support it, via the vendor’s own management cloud.
Integration via a mediator
Society Operations System
All the modules are integrated to a local, centralized management system that provides a single pane of view on the health of the system and empowers management. As the system covers all essential needs of a community, we call it the society operations system - SOS (!).
The management system has the following key features
Monitoring (collecting continuously data)
Fault detection and diagnostics
Performance management (collection of counters and reporting on them)
Configuration management (changing operating parameters)
Software management (upgrading components)
Inventory (keeping track of hardware and installed firmware, software and connections).
The upper-level system exposes only high-level view of these topics. The more detailed management of each module is done with its own, native interface (web, app etc.) that can be opened easily from the umbrella layer interfaces.
Radiator
In addition to the various screens of the management system and open APIs, the overall system is visualized in a simple grid where each subsystem is represented in a grid with a traffic light showing either green or red depending whether its overall condition is functional or in some serious or major error state. Clicking on a segment on grid allows to drill-down to see what of the internal components of it is in error and who is the contact for finding more about that system.
See below of planned system radiator:
Self-governance
The system allow the community to self-govern themselves. In a small community this is easy. Policy can simply be defined when all community members gather together to discuss proposals and after dialogue vote on them.
It also comes with software for managing governance via digital tools. Underlying is a simple flow for crowdsourcing ideas. Anyone in the community can make community improvement proposals (CIPs), these are discussed in the embedded forum software. New versions are presented based on feedback until proposal makers feel the CIP has been sufficiently improved. A pre-vote is held and if enough of eligible members favor it (say 10% votes and more than half are in favor), it goes for a full vote. Vote period is by default 3 weeks allowing people to familiarize themselves with the presented idea and also temporarily absent members to become familiar with the topic. If enough participants vote and over half are in favor, the vote is accepted.
IIBO supports a business configuration where a set percentage of each transaction goes to a common pool (called Treasury). Funds in this shared purse can be allocated to upkeep infra, run system and fund new developments. The self-governance system is used to make decisions of use of funds.
IIBO approach is to support asynchronously decisions making and preserving voters’ anonymity (something not always possible in-person voting). You could call this democracy in a box.
Physical structure
One approach to build these modules, is to repurpose logistics containers and add the needed infrastructure there. For example, energy module could pack PV panels and other outside gear inside the container during transport. Its naturally possible to build bespoke modular housing for the solution. And in some case like a health clinic this may be the best option.
The benefits of containers are that used containers are relatively inexpensive as they get produced in such large quantities (at least were before the current shortages), they are everywhere and all types of transportation equipment like trucks, trains, cargo ships have been adapted or built just for the purpose of transporting them.
Thus the biggest advantage of the containerized structure is the mobility – the unit can be re-located as the needs and commercial possibilities emerge.
Modules
Let’s do a quick spin around the various modules
Electricity Module
This is as an example sea container turned into transportable energy generation. It contains panels, MPPT charge controller, inverter, batteries, cables, electricity meters. Equipment inside is unpacked when it is taken into production but can be packed back if it is taken to a new location.
Installation requires still cabling to be taken to consumers, a task done locally.
Electricity container is also cooled (batteries require this) and has installation space for additional servers for hosting local digital services and content.
As such IIBO is neutral to the method of generating electricity on the system level.
Private Mobile Network
This product provides a 4G or 5G private network module containing a private mobile network, edge processing and a server capable of hosting a suite of digital services.
It’s best built using all-in-one small cell products because they are
Small and lightweight enough for one person to install.
Limited output power for keeping safety distances reasonable.
Limited power consumption (below 110W, typically <60W).
Edge servers is used to run number of internal services related to communications, solar and water generation. But in addition to built-in services, it offers an open environment for additional, local applications. E.g., a managed container environment allowing to run any virtualized application given capacity limitations.
Users can use their phones to top-up their subscriptions using the payment module.
Water Purifier
Current purification systems are multi-step starting usually with clarification/coagulation followed by sand filtration and finally with membrane based nanofiltration for river water or reverse osmosis for sea water. Sometimes followed by ultraviolet treatment. One of the drawbacks is fouling, that requires regular washing of the membrane to clean it.
The water module produces drinking water for local community, water for animals and for growing plants.
Water can be sold directly from the purifications system to customer via the payment system. You pay for say 20 liters based and the faucet opens for that amount.
Alternatively, a more complex water delivery system directly to households can be arranged. This requires more infrastructure as each house will be equipped with own water meter. User purchase water via their smart phones.
As sea water-based approach has a taste not to everyone’s (anyone’s) liking, the concept can be enhanced with a water carbonation system offering a wide variety of flavors.
Greenhouse Container
A controlled-environment container for growing plants. Quick to install and start producing. Sensor based irrigation and pest detection. Optimized lightning etc. Holland has a lot to offer in this respect according to my understanding.
This can be used to grown produce for own consumption but the concept can be extended to connect to international markets. The right plant to grow could in South-Africa be for example flowers as they have rather high price and low weight + SA is fairly well connected via air to say Europe. Whether Dutch ecosystem is eager to grow a competitor as part of this project is something I do not know.
This is really an option that might make more sense when the approach is applied in more developed parts of the world like EU.
Cold Container for Agricultural Produce
Cold container is a storage facility for keeping fresh produce like vegetables at lower temperature. This improves their self-life and allows producers to gain better price.
Sanitation
What goes in, must also go out. Sanitation is a specially important topic as its one of the key enablers to avoid spread of diseases.
2,5 billion people do not have proper sanitation. Without the possibility to wash hands diseases spread easily, diarrheas in particular. Unmanaged human feces lead to ground water pollution spreading yet again diseases.
Some cultures have toilet related rules about in-laws and grown-up children of the opposite gender that would require separate toilets for different groups. For more on this see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4352092/
One module that can use containers as “raw materis” is to equipping them to become latrines. These could offer also earning opportunities or be part of schools to get children used to the practice of washing hands. As example, in Kenia Sanergy runs a sanitation network. They design their own toilets, franchise to entrepreneurs who take a small fee and then converts the waste into fertilizers to be sold.
These toilets could either be waterless or integrated to a blackwater system in the community. We’ll return later to the topic of handling waste.
Health Module
The clinic houses key medical services such as general healthcare, vaccinations, basic diagnostics, minor procedures, maternal and child health. In addition to this the facility has a number of imaging tools and ability to send results for remote diagnostics. Patient records can be cached locally and updated when the demand for networking is lowest, for example during nights.
Connectivity module enables telemedicine allowing the local health practitioners to ask advise from more senior mentors further away or the remove experts to consult patients in more demanding cases.
Ability to cache patient data and run local automated diagnostic services with health materials like books and videos helps the clinic to operate in island mode even when Internet connectivity is temporarily down.
Education
This component contains a learning management system for the teachers to plan their courses, manage pupil information like exams taken and grades, and host educational content. For the teacher it also enables to communicate with parents. Students can use it to view local educational.
Another key feature is local content caching. National administrators can update standardized learning materials that are automatically cached on the local storage.
This allows the school to continue operating even when the connectivity to the Internet is lost. This naturally relies on local energy and connectivity modules.
Payment module
Allows community members to pay for electricity, water and trade with each other.
Digital information services
As there is processing capacity, the system can host a number of additional, local services.
Typical ones include for example pre-packaged open-source services for communications like:
Forum software. Forums are an asynchronous information sharing and communications method. Core functions contain setting up categories and subcategories with threaded discussions.
Discussion servers offering text, voice, and video chat features.
IP Radio allowing local persons to broadcast their own shows
Various records of the community (ownerships etc.)
Digital Embassy Concept
The state keeps track of a wide variety of topics in all types of registries. Among some of the key ones are property register (who owns what with transactions), business registry (commercial entities), births, marriages and deaths (with causes), vehicle registry, drivers’ licenses, educational data, health records, paid and outstanding taxes and so on.
Estonia has implemented a concept called digital embassy, where these copies of this key data is help outside of the country in a data center deep underground. Living next to a large expansionist colonial dictatorship that believes human life is not valuable has taught them the importance of resilience.
Now this concept makes sense also in decentralised communities, whether informal or permanent. If the data is kept also on the cloud in encrypted format, the community can stand all kinds of hiccups, hardware failures and intentional harm and still not lose any important data.
A modern alternative to cloud services is to keep the data on some of the blockchain based file storages in encrypted format. Or why not both?
In any emergency, should the community need to relocate with only being able to take the bare minimum, everything is recoverable. Purchase just a few servers and download data from the cloud storage and you’re back in business.
Same goes for infra as the investment level for decentral infra is much lower than large, centralized installations.
This of course requires funds. The best way is to keep the funds in globally accepted form. This in practice means that communities should keep recovery funds in crypto-currencies like Bitcoin as this allows starting afresh anywhere in the globe.
Extensions
As the system has standardized interfaces, it’s easy for new physical service providers to integrate with it and become part of the ecosystem.
For example, it is common in emerging markets to sell ice. People use ice to keep vegetables and other food cool to preserve it longer when they do not have a refrigerator or as the cold storage is mostly for food producers and people keep groceries at home. Once the ice has melted, people can drink the water as the ice is made from purified water.
Same applies to the upper level.
The system collects information about operations to a local data store. This becomes a rich source for local software developers and machine learning experts to diagnose the behavior of the system and develop new solutions on top.
All modules contain open interfaces (APIs) for controlling non-critical aspects of the system.
As typical solutions that we envision as example
Predictive care for various technical components.
Integrating environmental sensor to the IIBO data store and building hyperlocal weather predictions
Integrating above mentioned hyperlocal weather forecasts to drive system functionality on relevant parts (such as battery levels etc.)
Summary
This solution integrates sustainable energy through solar power, private 4G network, and internet access alongside vital resources like water purification, container greenhouses managed by computers, and cold storage for agricultural produce. It also includes essential services such as small health clinics, a learning management system, and content caching for schools. The infrastructure further encompasses local payment systems, self-governance tools via voting applications, and a range of digital services like forums, discussion boards, blogging, and IP radio.
All integrated together via an integration architecture that allows participants the flexibility develop and customize their solutions as needed and for customers to swap vendors.
But wait there’s more…
Roads, Bridges and Harbours
The system above was about rolling out the “life-support system” of a community in a modular, open, extensible and hopefully affordable way that bring decentralisation and resilience to the world.
There is a lot of other type of infrastructure that is also mission critical but more on connecting communities physically.
Let’s dive right in, shall we.
Roads
Roadbuilding itself is relatively low tech and local in nature. There is one option that might be useful in building transport infrastructure rapidly to newly emerging settlements like refugee centres.
That is to build them from pre-fabricated modules. These modular blocks to be designed for easy assembly and have space under them to assemble all needed municipal infrastructure such optical cables, water, black and runoff waters, district heating and cooling, electric cables. Since the pipes are horizontal with no or little inclination, blackwaters need to be carried away with a vacuum system like in the passenger ships. Clean water delivered from water towers where pull of gravity creates pressure. Modularity lowers costs of installation and modules will be designed so that repair staff has easy access to the infrastructure.
Benefit of these modules is that they make integration of buildings into the surrounding city infrastructure fast and convenient.
But his makes sense only in warmer climates where the ground does not freeze during winters. Water in pipes would freeze and break pipes and valves.
As an example, see this:
https://weburbanist.com/2015/07/20/road-blocks-lego-like-modular-roads-snap-into-place/
Streetlights and other street furniture
Streetlights can be integrated to the same modular walkway structure and every other light equipped with a base station, WiFi access point providing coverage to residents and a variety of other services like measuring air quality. Since modular walkways do not exist today, user data can also be sent via optic cables, microwave links etc.
Telecom equipment vendors have been coming up with products like this during recent years .
Bridges and Harbours
There are several ways to quickly set up floating infrastructure. Nextbase is an example of a company putting a large balloon inside a sea container to make it float. Connecting these together allows to quickly build floating bridges and temporary harbors.
First users can be for example earthquake areas where existing infrastructure has been destroyed. But one can think of other uses where logistics to a specific site comes via water this does not necessarily mean that it is just for a short duration as the constructions are cheap, they can be renewed easily should the need ever arise. Other use cases include for example a case where ships or other floating platforms need to be repaired, a nearby dock might get a temporary extension.
This is really just an example of the modular concept, where standardised, pre-engineered components are used to quickly assemble on-site.
A completely different approach is to use 3D printing. As an example in Amsterdam a 12 meter long 3D printed bridge over a canal opened in 2021.
And last but not least, airports
Airports
Aviation & drone logistics evoluation
Electric aviation is rapidly progressing for many reasons, such as environmental concerns, advances in battery technology, and recent advances in machine learning regarding well-known autonomous driving and flights. The tragic war in Ukraine is further speeding up the development of drones to an unprecedented tempo.
Electric aircraft are expected to lower the cost of aviation for several reasons. Electric motors are a much simpler design with fewer parts. This reduces manufacturing costs and makes them more reliable (fewer moving parts subject to tear and wear). Reliability lowers maintenance costs and increases potential operating hours.
Also, the fuel costs are lower. Fossil fuel prices are expected to grow significantly due to rising emission trade prices as societies combat global warming. Electricity can be produced in many clean ways, with prices in many of these technologies having a long-lasting trend of getting cheaper (solar in particular).
They produce significantly less noise than traditional aircraft powered by fossil fuels. This means airports in more residential areas can become more viable, as they would be less disruptive to nearby residents.
They are often smaller and lighter than traditional aircraft so they may require shorter runways for takeoff and landing.
Electric planes often fly shorter distances than traditional aircraft, so that they may be better suited for regional and local flights. Current governments are likely to support transformation to clean modes of transportation with various incentives.
These benefits lead to a direction where a loose mesh of a small airport is likely to densify rather than reduce in numbers. The world of aviation is already decentralizing on its own.
Drone based logistics delivery will work from these mostly automated small and medium airfields. Automated robots pack larger drones that fly in to the smaller airfields delivering goods and smaller drones or automated robot-taxis/vans take the goods to customers. People who have goods to send (think small businesses), pack their goods and have robo-vans from logistics companies pick them up, take to the airfield and from there forwards towards bigger logistics centers and customers.
Airfield in a box
Drones or small two or four seater electric planes do not need massive infrastructure. Basic need is a grass field of enough length and some form of air traffic control telling when it is safe to land and where to park the airplane/drone.
Airfield in a box (AiaB) is at minimum a prepackaged solution consisting of tower where base station antennas are attached, a small cabinet at the bottom housing needed equipment, electric supply (solar for example) and some connection to Internet (for example satellite).
The cabinet needs some sensing equipment like cameras and radars to detect people and vehicles moving about and local air traffic control software so that the airfield can operate even when the Internet connection is not working.
On top of that there needs to be a grass field, a main building for waiting incoming traffic or own plane to pick up, optionally a few hangars.
That’s it. If there is flat field somewhere, it can be an automated, state-of-the-art pop-up airfield in a day or so in future.