IT-Enabled Resource Management

As information technology becomes more widespread, access to real-time data regarding the supply and demand for resources is becoming central to the management of physical infrastructures. Current information systems for resource management are mostly static, so an underlying challenge in the management of resources is how to overcome time-lags in information transfer for efficiently measuring demand and then adequately provisioning a supply of resources to meet that demand. Particularly in the context of ‘smart cities’, a new framework is required for information management in the context of resource management. In this paper, we propose an information architecture consisting of life-cycle design, scalable and flexible resource microgrids, pervasive sensing, data analytics and visualization, and policy-based autonomous control that directly links real-time demand patterns to the state of various supply-side management systems. This integrated supply-demand information system is used to obtain a more holistic view of information flow through the infrastructure. We show that such an architecture is more efficient at information transfer than existing systems, and posit that this increased efficiency in turn enables improved management of resources within the infrastructure because of the availability of a higher number of degrees of freedom in the management of the infrastructure. The paper concludes by illustrating the applicability of the proposed architecture for a case study of two large-scale infrastructures.