Resilient Infrastructures via Digital Unification
Author(s)
Chen, Ang
Ratnasamy, Sylvia
Alizadeh, Mohammad
Chowdhury, Mosharaf
Guikema, Seth
Huang, Ryan
Jaganathann, Suresh
Kerkez, Branko
Lee, Edward
Low, Steven
Date Issued
December 4, 2025
Journal
Communications of the ACM
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Citation
Ang Chen, Sylvia Ratnasamy, Mohammad Alizadeh, Mosharaf Chowdhury, Seth Guikema, Ryan Huang, Suresh Jaganathann, Branko Kerkez, Edward Lee, Steven Low, Morley Mao, Johanna Mathieu, Michael Reiter, Xinyu Wang, and Vinton Cerf. 2025. Resilient Infrastructures via Digital Unification. Commun. ACM 69, 1 (January 2026), 38–40.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Industrial infrastructures such as datacenters, power grids, and water systems must be reliable and resilient:1 adaptive to changing conditions to withstand and recover from shocks, while maximizing resource efficiency. This is a daunting task because infrastructures are scaling up to address rising demands, and also because they are becoming more decentralized and diversified. Consider power grids: electrification of heating and transportation puts pressure on power supply, and the increase in distributed energy resources (including solar, batteries, and flexible loads) creates a distributed and heterogeneous system. Furthermore, infrastructures are increasingly interdependent. Power grids require more water for cooling due to higher energy demands, and water extraction consumes more energy because of a shrinking fresh water supply. Interdependence raises the stakes because problems often propagate across the infrastructure boundary—for example, power failures often disrupt drinking water or natural gas distribution.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/3736713
