- About Us 
Challenge: Public Infrastructure
- March 22, 2001:Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, NY, the world's largest refuse dump, closes to be turned into a city park.
- October 16, 2002:Atlanta begins sewer and water infrastructure overhaul, a $4 billion initiative to inspect, repair, and replace as needed its 1,600 miles of sewer pipe.
- June 9, 2003:Philadelphia International Airport deploys new air traffic control technology, that runs solely on a fully automated system.
- August 14, 2003:A massive Northeast power outage occurs due to a glitch on the power grid, affecting 45 million people in eight U.S. states.
- June 21, 2004:Port of Long Beach debuts first container ship to use electricity instead of diesel power to operate cranes with aims to lower air pollution.
- January 24, 2005:City of Chicago sells its 7.8 mile Skyway for $1.82 billion for a 99-year lease to a Spanish-Australian conglomerate.
- August 29, 2005:Over 50 levees and floodwalls protecting the city of New Orleans and its suburbs fail during Hurricane Katrina.
- December 12, 2005:Atlantic County in NJ unveils its wastewater treatment facility, the first wastewater plant in the U.S. to be powered by solar energy arrays and a 5-turbine wind farm.
- August 1, 2007:The Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapses during rush hour, killing 13 and injuring 145 people.
- November 26, 2007:City of Charlotte opens the Lynx light rail system, with opening weekend resulting in 24,000 trips in the first 4 hours and 60,000 trips on the first day.
- August 7, 2008:Oregon DOT installs a row of 5ft wide solar panels measuring 200 yards long at the interchange of I-5 and I-205 used to power lights and signage.
- September 12, 2008:A passenger and freight train collide in Los Angeles, killing 25 people.
- October 28, 2009:The San Francisco Bay Bridge closes in both traffic lanes after high-strength steel rods and a crossbeam from a steel saddle fell.
- March 1, 2010:New York's JFK airport closes its longest runway for four months for repavement, causing delays across the nation.
- May 2, 2010:A massive underground pipe bursts in Boston's main line affecting the drinking water of 2 million people. The governor issues a state of emergency.
- June 24, 2010:The Lake Delhi dam in Iowa breaks causing disastrous floods to crops and displacing hundreds of people.
In this new decade, the United States arrives at a critical juncture with an aging, overused, and neglected public infrastructure system from airports to water pipes. To add to this situation, the nation faces tight federal and state budgets, immense global competition, and growing population. And yet, the general public, perhaps the most essential stakeholder, being both everyday users and taxpaying owners continue to be uninformed and unengaged in the process of delivering and managing public infrastructure.
 Aging Public Infrastructure |
 Tight Federal and State Budgets |
 Immense Global competition |
 Growing Future Population |
Opportunity: User Input
InfraInput is a one-stop, database-driven website for users to inform the public of their issues and ideas across an array of infrastructure facilities. Now, complaint or feedback sections of utilities, tranportation agencies, public works, state departments, and others are combined into one simple platform for documentation and dissemination. Altogether, this process will aid in the maintenance and rehabilitation of public facilities, helping to rebuild America.
| Issues | Examples: Bent utility and telephone poles, foul sewer smells, underutilized transit lines, delayed train systems, functionally obsolete bridges, inadequate airport ground access, molding school buildings, abandoned parks and greenspaces, deteriorating highways ... | Ideas | Examples: electronic fareboxes, solar panel bus shelters, recycled material composites for utility poles, privatized bridge inspections firm, energy efficient HVAC systems in libraries, broadband coverage in underserved areas, high speed rail at crucial corridors ... |
InfraInput also serves other objectives:
- Allows all visitors to see other issues and proposed solutions within and between different geographies.
- Provides real-time demand side information to public agencies and managers of operations and maintenance.
- Begins a national conversation from the gray pavement to the legislative gavel around a critical subject matter.
Founder
 | Parfait Gasana is a recent graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with research focus on transportation and infrastructure, a trained academic and public policy researcher and data analyst. A lover of trains and the social vibrancy of transit, a city street walker and jogger, a kid who took the long way home, Parfait believes the public's attention can finally turn around decades-long neglect into needed investment in public infrastructure. |