Infrastructure is the foundation of modern-day civilization. We ultimately rely upon infrastructure to provide us with access to the resources needed to exist at this scale and density on our planet. Yet there exists a stark funding gap — there is currently a $1 trillion global shortfall on basic infrastructure investment worldwide as compared to what’s needed. This seriously threatens our future prosperity and development.

With the growing population and national development plans of countries around the world, there is an increasing emphasis on heavy infrastructure, industrial and institutional structures. While this has generated demand for construction, the construction and engineering ecosystem itself is undergoing a paradigm shift that project owners and project managers need to address. The projects are getting larger and more complex, posing challenges in meeting budget and schedule. Every project varies from the other, and requires an in-depth understanding to deliver most optimum solutions. There are also growing expectations on project managers; project owners and the public are increasingly expecting more work to get done for less money, while maintaining safety, quality, project transparency, and environmental sustainability.

A large part of this infrastructure will inevitably be exposed to a plethora of natural hazards including floods, earthquakes, storms, tsunamis etc. At the same time, there is a risk that the new infrastructure may itself create new disaster risks. The objective of building a coalition is to generate new knowledge on hazard risk assessment, disaster resilient technologies and mechanisms for integrating risk reduction in infrastructure financing. This will help ensure that all new infrastructure is not only disaster resilient itself but also does not create new disaster risks.

In such a scenario, the most pressing need for the construction industry is to put innovation at the core of its processes to address many of these challenges. Introducing geospatial technologies - including positioning, GIS, BIM, and LiDAR in construction and engineering offers detailed information, improves collaboration, efficiency, and performance in planning and design phase, during construction, in post- build savings and for ongoing operational management of an engineering project. Further, geospatial technology itself is witnessing a lot of innovations that are scaling up their potential from basic positioning information to offering a seamless integration across all stages, giving intelligent, connected workflows that help improve predictability, productivity, and profitability for engineering projects.

The program on ‘Construction and Engineering’ with theme Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure – Key to Economic Growth during Geospatial World Forum 2018 will highlight the relevance, applications, and emerging trends in geospatial technology for construction and engineering. The program will present a high level discussion forum focused on addressing the challenges and opportunities for construction and showcase of solutions that can help gain more accurate, accessible, and actionable insights, which can benefit throughout the execution and lifecycle of the projects. It will glance through latest technology revolutions and what they offer today, tomorrow, and in the future.