Data Infrastructures for Asset Management Viewed as Complex Adaptive Systems

Data infrastructures represent information about physical reality. As reality changes, data infrastructures might also be subject to change. Researchers have increasingly approached physical infrastructures as being complex adaptive systems (CAS). Although physical infrastructures are often approached as CAS, the underlying data infrastructures hardly are. Studying data infrastructures as CAS has significant implications for our understanding of them. A CAS lens will help us to identify and better understand their key elements and coordination mechanisms for their functioning and dealing with change. Accepting data infrastructures as CASs also means we need to understand the consequences for their development. On the basis of state of the art literature, and an explorative case study of Rijkswaterstaat in the Netherlands, an overview of known data infrastructural elements and the coordination mechanisms connecting them will be presented. The results show that successful development of data infrastructures requires consideration of a wide variety of elements that can be coordinated using various coordination mechanisms. We conclude that a more complete picture of what data infrastructures are and how they can be coordinated is needed.