The infrastructure built across the globe in the next decade will set the path of development and decarbonization for the next half century or longer. An urgency exists to ensure that those responsible for building this infrastructure—engineers, developers, investors, governments—have familiarity with and access to sustainable infrastructure tools and best practices. Building upon a virtual community of practice model developed for the health sector (Project ECHO), the Sustainable Infrastructure-Community of Learners (SI-CoL) is developing a global network of virtual learning hubs to build sustainable infrastructure capacity quickly, inexpensively, and effectively. The first phase of the initiative was pilot program from May 2021—22 that focused on the UN Environment’s best practice principles for sustainable infrastructure. We are now working to launch a series of sector-specific learning hubs. In this session, Dr. Elizabeth Losos of Duke University will present the sustainable infrastructure learning hub model and then discuss two proposed hubs that require expertise and participation from engineering schools across the globe: (1) Creating Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering Curricula and (2) Sustainable Rebuilding Turkey’s Infrastructure.
Speaker Elizabeth Losos is a Executive in Residence at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability at Duke University. She explores policies and programs to mitigate the climate, environment and social risks from large-scale infrastructure projects in the transportation and energy sectors. Dr. Losos and her colleagues at Duke University and the UN Environment Program are leading the Sustainable Infrastructure Community of Learners (SI-CoL), an international network of individuals and organizations dedicated to building capacity development for sustainable infrastructure development.