It is a heavy bill that Italy runs the risk of having to pay in the next few years for the failure to build the infrastructures put in place but still to be built. The costs could in fact reach €530 billion over the next eighteen years, divided between the telecommunications sector (293 billion), transport (119 billion), energy (82 billion) and the environment (37 billion). A cost that our country certainly cannot afford, not only in light of the tragic consequences of the lack of maintenance of works built for decades, as in the case of the Morandi bridge in Genoa, but also due to the growth and productivity gap that separate it from the rest of Europe. If it costs to build new infrastructures, it risks costing more not to build them, as emerges from the latest edition of the Study on the Costs of Not Doing, carried out by Agici's InfrastructureResearch&Advisory Unit.
The study was presented in Rome during the seminar “Innovation and Cost-Benefit Analysis: the tools for the infrastructure of the future” which saw the participation of representatives of companies present in a wide range of economic sectors, experts, representatives of the political and government world. An essential support for a new season of infrastructural investments - the president of Agici, Andrea Giardoni recalled, opening the seminar - can come from the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) which, if carried out independently, can offer very useful elements of judgment for decisions that, in the end, are in any case the responsibility of policy makers. "Quality, innovation, sustainability must be the pillars of the new infrastructural policies" argued Stefano Clerici, coordinator of the Infrastructure Unit of Agici, in illustrating the Study. "In the definition of future priorities and for an infrastructural relaunch of the country - he added - new approaches will be needed that are more attentive to planning, innovation and improvement of the existing ones". And a fundamental contribution to overcoming the Costs of Not Doing, according to Clerici, will come on the one hand from the use of CBA methodologies and on the other from the developments in digitization offered by the Internet of Things (IoT).
Edoardo Rixi, undersecretary of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport insisted on the need to modernize infrastructure policies, especially after the tragedy in Genoa. “We need to overcome the current backwardness in the field of data digitization. In fact, an intelligent management of the infrastructures and the relative amount of data that require continuous updating, would ensure a much more efficient and secure infrastructure system” said Rixi. Furthermore, greater integration between the public and private systems would make it possible to overcome those limits which often do not allow for quick answers to problems. "In this way, the public will not only have charges but also the possibility to dialogue and interact with the private sector and obtain good results" concluded the MIT undersecretary. But how to reconcile the financing of infrastructure and new public investments with the narrow margins of the state budget? For Massimo Garavaglia, Deputy Minister of Economy and Finance, "the problem is not resources, but spending capacity".
Last year, he noted, against new allocations amounting to €1,9 billion for public investments, the actual expenditure was zero. And this is due to a series of causes which, according to Garavaglia, are called accounting rules (for example the fact that, until a recent ruling by the Constitutional Court, Regions and Municipalities were not allowed to use any administration surpluses), an approach to investment choices, the procurement code, the concession system, the "ribbon cutting syndrome". "If this syndrome were overcome, the South would discover that it was sitting on a gold mine and would have a great opportunity to relaunch" argued the MEF exponent, also hoping that in the field of public investments the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti would play a role active and proactive. Numerous food for thought came from the interventions of the representatives of the companies involved in the sectors most affected by a relaunch of infrastructure investments. Like, for example, the water one. "In the decade 1999-2009, investments in the water sector amounted to just €0,5 billion/year" noted Giordano Colarullo, General Manager of Utilitalia. "With the entry into force of the first Tariff Method, introduced by the AEEGSI, in the four-year period 2012-2015 they passed to over 1 billion €/year and with the new tariff levels for the four-year period 2016 - 2019, an average level can already be assumed of over €2 billion/year.
It is clear that the regulation of the sector has brought about a change of pace” he continued, adding that the priority in future investment strategies must be aimed at “resolving emergencies and inefficiencies linked to vast areas of backwardness”. From this point of view, for Colarullo, the guidance and control functions of the entire sector and the CBA will play an important role. Which, according to Maurizio Gentile, CEO and DG of Rete Ferroviaria Italiana, constitutes “a valid tool for measuring the advantage of the effects that the railway system produces, above all in terms of safety and environmental impact. It therefore assumes a certain value within the decision-making process on investment projects that must be considered in the context of an already shared transport strategy”. Many people underline how the watchword for the infrastructure of the future will be less steel and concrete, more intelligence and quality. "The closely intertwined trends of digitization and the IoT have already created a "connected world" of equipment, sensors and systems capable of managing the high attention on predictive maintenance and business continuity issues useful for ensuring adequate service levels and economically sustainable” argued Saul Fava VP Strategic Marketing & Digital Schneider Electric.
"Today all this is already possible in various sectors and in particular in infrastructures, characterized by large networks distributed throughout the territory which add significant management complexities to technical issues". On the same issue, Antonio De Bellis of ABB believes that "our country it could be truly attractive through smart people, able to have technological skills and the ability to use information and communication technologies, and new models of collaboration such as, for example, a national development committee".
Francesco Bettoni, President of BreBeMi, recalled how an essential contribution to sustainable mobility can come from new technologies. "The development of the new Smart Roads project by ANAS, as well as the idea of sustainable mobility starting from the circular economy, have encouraged both us and our grantor, CAL Concessioni Autostradali Lombarde, to "look beyond" and present the pilot electrification project of the A35 motorway for road freight transport,” he said. "Smart Road is a world-leading program - according to Bettoni - and through the IoT paradigm it will allow for increasingly safe, interconnected roads and highways capable of interacting with users by providing information on traffic and the state of the infrastructure and the new A35 electrification project fits well into this context”.
