Our Research Results

Horizontal Research Roundtable on Infrastructure (HRRI)

The HRRI brings together more than 25 federal government departments and organizations to facilitate and foster targeted collaborative research on infrastructure. Members of the Roundtable meet regularly to share and strengthen their knowledge, identify opportunities to advance shared research interests and undertake new research on critical horizontal issues.

This page describes research activities undertaken by the HRRI.

The Infrastructure Gap
Infrastructure, Communities, and Natural Disasters
Financing Mechanisms for Public Infrastructure
Innovation, Technology and Transformative Infrastructure
Community-Level Impacts of Infrastructure
Enhancing Knowledge about Public Infrastructure: Perspectives in the Federal Family

The Infrastructure Gap

On January 25th, 2006 Dr. Jack Mintz, President and CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute, met with the HRRI to discuss ways of assessing the infrastructure gap. As well as probing the soundness of some of the most oft-used estimates of the gap, he identified a number of considerations that a robust analysis should address.

Infrastructure, Communities, and Natural Disasters

On November 30th, 2005 Dr. Gordon McBean and Mr. Paul Kovacs from the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction met with the HRRI to discuss their work on Natural Disasters, Infrastructure, and Communities. The discussion focused on the impacts and costs of disasters, and the opportunities to improve the disaster-resilience of both public infrastructure and communities. For a copy of the presentation from this event, please contact HRRI-TRRHI@infc.gc.ca.

Financing Mechanisms for Public Infrastructure

On November 1st, 2005 Dr. Roger Gibbins and Mr. Casey Vander Ploeg of the Canada West Foundation (CWF) met with the HRRI to present and discuss their research on financing mechanisms for municipal infrastructure. CWF research publications can be accessed on its web site This link will lead you outside the Infrastructure Canada web site. www.cwf.ca, and the presentation is available here.

Innovation, Technology and Transformative Infrastructure

The first HRRI meeting on Innovation, Technology and Transformative Infrastructure on June 23, 2005 included a presentation on the importance of thinking in the long-term about infrastructure and community issues. Sebastian Moffat, whose background includes work on the award-winning citiesPlus project on sustainable urban systems design, gave a presentation on This link will lead you outside the Infrastructure Canada web site. The Substantive Benefits of Thinking Long-term about Infrastructure.

Community-Level Impacts of Infrastructure

The first HRRI workshop on the Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Impacts of Infrastructure on Communities was held on February 4, 2005, under the lead of Infrastructure Canada and Industry Canada. The workshop, "Community-Level Impacts of Infrastructure", consisted of a series of presentations from experts on the impacts of infrastructure followed by discussion among HRRI members. The summary report of the workshop and copies of the experts' presentations are available below:

Summary Report
Presentations:
- Jason Stanley - " Investigating the Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts of Road Infrastructure: A Peek at the Labrador Road Study " [PDF]
- Ken Jones and Reid Henry - " Measuring the Impact of Investments in Cultural Facilities " [PowerPoint]
- Michael Curri - " Economic Impacts of IT Infrastructure " [PowerPoint]
- Ricardo Ramirez - " Broadband in Rural and Remote Communities: An Exploration of Impact Assessment" (To come)

Enhancing Knowledge about Public Infrastructure: Perspectives in the Federal Family

Results from the first phase of research undertaken by the Horizontal Research Roundtable on the State of Infrastructure (the predecessor to today's HRRI) provides an overview of what public infrastructure means to a number of federal organizations. The results include a summary paper, 1-page summaries of each organization's perspective on public infrastructure and their presentations to the Roundtable: