State and local failure to appropriately integrate flood risk into planning is a massive national liability – and a massive contributor to national debt. Though flooding is well recognized as a growing problem, our nation continues to address this threat through reactive, costly disaster responses instead of proactive, cost-saving investments in resilient infrastructure.

President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) on Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness introduces a nationally strategic opportunity to rethink how state and local governments manage flood risk. The EO calls for the development and implementation of a National Resilience Strategy and National Risk Register, emphasizing the need for a decentralized approach to preparedness. To support this approach, the Trump Administration should mandate that state governments establish and fund flood infrastructure vulnerability assessment programs as a prerequisite for accessing federal flood mitigation funds. Modeled on the Resilient Florida Program, this policy would both improve coordination among federal, state, and local governments and yield long-term cost savings.

Challenge and Opportunity 

President Trump’s aforementioned EO signals a shift in national infrastructure policy. The order moves away from a traditional “all-hazards” approach to a more focused, risk-informed strategy. This new framework prioritizes proactive, targeted measures to address infrastructure risks. It also underscores the crucial role of state and local governments in enhancing national security and building a more resilient nation—emphasizing that preparedness is most effectively managed at subnational levels, with the federal government providing competent, accessible, and efficient support.

A core provision of the EO is the creation of a National Resilience Strategy to guide efforts in strengthening infrastructure against risks. The order mandates a comprehensive review of existing infrastructure policies, with the goal of recommending risk-informed approaches. The EO also directs development of a National Risk Register to document and assess risks to critical infrastructure, thereby providing a foundation for informed decision-making in infrastructure planning and funding.

In carrying out these directives, the risks of flooding on critical infrastructure must not be overlooked. The frequency and cost of weather- and flood-related disasters are increasing nationwide due to a combination of heightened exposure (infrastructure growth due to population and economic expansion) and vulnerability (susceptibility to damage). As shown in Figure 1, the cost of responding to disaster events such as flooding, severe storms, and tropical cyclones has risen exponentially since 1980, often reaching hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Figure 1. United States Billion-Dollar Disaster Events – Flooding, Severe Storm, and Tropical Cyclone, 1980-2024 

Financial implications for the U.S. budget have also grown. As illustrated in Figure 2, federal appropriations to the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) have surged in recent decades, driven by the demand for critical response and recovery services.

Figure 2. U.S. Nominal Dollar Disaster Relief Appropriations, FY 1964-FY2023 

Infrastructure across the United States remains increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Critical infrastructure – including roads, utilities, and emergency services – is often inadequately equipped to withstand these heightened risks. Many critical infrastructure systems were designed decades ago when flood risks were lower, and have not been upgraded or replaced to account for changing conditions. The upshot is that significant deficiencies, reduced performance, and catastrophic economic consequences often result when floods occur today.

The costs of bailing out and patching up this infrastructure time and time again under today’s flood risk environment have become unsustainable. While agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) maintain and publish extensive flood risk datasets, no federal requirements mandate state and local governments to integrate this data with critical infrastructure data through flood infrastructure vulnerability assessments. This gap in policy demonstrates a disconnect between federal, state, and local efforts to protect critical infrastructure from flooding risks.

The only way to address this disconnect, and the recurring cost problem, is through a new paradigm – one that proactively integrates flood risk management and infrastructure resilience planning through mandatory, comprehensive flood infrastructure vulnerability assessments (FIVAs).

Multiple state programs demonstrate the benefits of such assessments. Most notably, the Resilient Florida Program, established in 2021, represents a significant investment in enhancing the resilience of critical infrastructure to flooding, rainfall, and extreme storms. Section 380.093 of the Florida Statutes requires all municipalities and counties across the state to conduct comprehensive FIVAs in order to qualify for state flood mitigation funding. These assessments identify risks to publicly owned critical and regionally significant assets, including transportation networks; evacuation routes; critical infrastructure; community and emergency facilities; and natural, cultural, and historical resources. To support this requirement, the Florida Legislature allocated funding to ensure municipalities and counties could complete the FIVAs. The findings then quickly informed statewide flood mitigation projects, with over $1.8 billion invested between 2021 and 2024 to reduce flooding risks across 365 implementation projects. 

To support the National Resilience Strategy and Risk Register, the Trump Administration should consider leveraging Florida’s model on a national scale. By requiring all states to conduct FIVAs, the federal government can limit its financial liability while advancing a more efficient and effective model of flood resilience that puts states and localities at the fore.

Rather than relying on federal funds to conduct these assessments, the federal government should implement a policy mandate requiring state governments to establish and fund their own FIVA programs. This mandate would diffuse federal responsibility of identifying flood risks to the state and local levels, ensuring that the assessments are tailored to the unique geographic conditions of each region. By decentralizing flood risk management, states can adopt localized strategies that better reflect their specific vulnerabilities and priorities. 

These state-led assessments would, in turn, provide a critical foundation for informed decision-making in national infrastructure planning, ensuring that federal investments in flood mitigation and resilience are targeted and effective. Specifically, the federal government would use the compiled data from state and local assessments to prioritize funding for projects that address the most pressing infrastructure vulnerabilities. This would enable federal agencies to allocate resources more efficiently, directing investments to areas with the highest risk exposure and the greatest potential for cost-effective mitigation. A standardized federal FIVA framework would ensure consistency in data collection, risk evaluation, and reporting across states. This would facilitate better coordination among federal, state, and local entities while improving integration of flood risk data into national infrastructure planning.

By implementing this strategy, the Trump Administration would reinforce the principle of shared responsibility in disaster preparedness and resilience, encouraging state and local governments to take the lead in safeguarding critical infrastructure. State-led FIVAs would also deliver significant long-term cost savings, given that investments in resilient infrastructure yield a substantial return on investment. (Studies show a 1:4 ratio of return on investment, meaning every dollar spent on resilience and preparedness saves $4 in future losses.) Finally, requiring FIVAs would build a more resilient nation, ensuring that communities are better equipped to withstand the increasing challenges posed by flooding and that federal investments are safeguarded. 

Plan of Action

The Trump Administration can support the National Resilience Strategy and National Risk Register by taking the following actions to promote state-led development and adoption of FIVAs. 

Recommendation 1. Create a Standardized FIVA Framework.

President Trump should direct his Administration, through an interagency FIVA Task Force, to create a standardized FIVA framework, drawing on successful models like the Resilient Florida Program. This framework will establish consistent methodologies for data collection, risk evaluation, and reporting, ensuring that assessments are both thorough and adaptable to state and local needs. An essential function of the task force should be to compile and review all existing federally maintained datasets on flood risks, which are maintained by agencies such as FEMA, NOAA, and USACE. By centralizing this information and providing streamlined access to high-quality, accurate data on flood risks, the task force will reduce the burden on state and local agencies.

Recommendation 2. Create Model Legislation.

The FIVA Task Force, working with leading organizations such as the American Flood Coalition (AFC), and Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM), should create model legislation that state governments can adapt and enact to require local development and adoption of FIVAs. This legislation should outline the requirements for conducting assessments, including which infrastructure types need to be evaluated, what flood risk scenarios need to be considered, and how the findings must be used to guide infrastructure planning and investments.

Recommendation 3. Spur Uptake and Establish Accountability and Reporting Mechanisms.

Once the FIVA framework and model legislation are created, the Administration should require states to enact FIVA laws in order to be eligible for receiving federal infrastructure funding. This requirement should be phased in on clear and feasible timelines, with clear criteria for what provisions FIVA laws must include. Regular reporting requirements should also be established, whereby states must provide updates on their progress in conducting FIVAs and integrating findings into infrastructure planning. Updates should be captured in a public tracking system to ensure transparency and hold states accountable for completing assessments on time. Federal agencies should evaluate federal infrastructure funding requests based on the findings from state-led FIVAs to ensure that investments are targeted at areas with the highest flood risks and the greatest potential for resilience improvements.

Recommendation 4. Use State and Local Data to Shape Federal Policy.

Ensure that the results of state-led FIVAs are incorporated into future updates of the National Resilience Strategy and Risk Register, as well as other relevant federal policy and programs. This integration will provide a comprehensive view of national infrastructure risks and help inform federal decision-making and resource allocation for disaster preparedness and response.

Conclusion

The Trump Administration’s EO on Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness opens the door to comprehensively rethink how we as a nation approach planning, disaster risk management, and resilience. Scaling successful approaches from states like Florida can deliver on the goals of the EO in at least five ways:

1. Empowering state and local governments to take the lead in managing flood risks, ensuring that assessments and strategies are more reflective of local needs and conditions.
2. Distributing the responsibility for identifying and mitigating flood risks across all levels of government, reducing the burden on the federal government and allowing more tailored, efficient responses.
3. Reducing disaster response costs by prioritizing proactive, risk-informed planning over reactive recovery efforts, leading to long-term savings.
4. Strengthening infrastructure resilience by making vulnerability assessments a condition for federal funding, driving investments that protect communities from flooding risks.
5. Fostering greater accountability at the state and local levels, as governments will be directly responsible for ensuring that infrastructure is resilient to flooding, leading to more targeted and effective investments.

“Melbourne Florida Flooding” by highlander411 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.

PLEASE NOTE (February 2025): Since publication several government websites have been taken offline. We apologize for any broken links to once accessible public data.

Earlier this week, the Senate confirmed Chris Wright as the Secretary of Energy, ushering in a new era of the Department of Energy (DOE). In his opening statement before Congress, Wright laid out his vision for the DOE under his leadership—to unleash American energy and restore “energy dominance”, lead the world in innovation by accelerating the work of the National Labs, and remove barriers to building energy projects domestically. Prior to Wright’s nomination, there have already been a range of proposals circulating for how, exactly, to do this.

Of these, a Trump FERC commissioner calls for the reorganization – a complete overhaul – of the DOE as-is. This proposed reorganization would eliminate DOE’s Office of Infrastructure, remove all applied energy programs, strip commercial technology and deployment funding, and rename the agency to be the Department of Energy Security and Advanced Science (DESAS). 

This proposal would eliminate crucial DOE offices that are accomplishing vital work across the country, and would give the DOE an unrecognizable facelift. Like other facelifts, the effort would be very costly – paid for by the American taxpayer, unnecessary, and a waste of public resources. Further, reorganizing DOE will waste the precious time and money of the Federal government, and mean that DOE’s incoming Secretary, Chris Wright, will be less effective in accomplishing the goals the President campaigned on – energy reliability, energy affordability, and winning the competition with China. The good news for the Trump Administration is that DOE’s existing organization structure is already well-suited and well-organized to pursue its “energy dominance” agenda. 

The Cost of Reorganizing

Since its inception in 1977, the Department of Energy has evolved several times in scope and focus to meet the changing needs of the nation. Each time, there was an intent and purpose behind the reorganization of the agency. For example, during the Clinton Administration, Congress restructured the nuclear weapons program into the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to bolster management and oversight. 

More recently, in 2022, another reorganization was driven by the need to administer major new Congressionally-authorized programs and taxpayer funds effectively. With the enactment of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), DOE combined existing programs, like the Loan Programs Office, with newly-authorized offices, like the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). This structure allows DOE to hone a new Congressionally-mandated skill set – demonstration and deployment – while not diluting its traditional competency in managing fundamental research and development.

Even when they make sense, reorganizations have their risks, especially in a complex agency like the DOE. Large-scale changes to agencies inherently disrupt operations, threaten a loss of institutional knowledge, impair employee productivity, and create their own legal and bureaucratic complexities. These inherent risks are exacerbated even further with rushed or unwarranted reorganizations.

The financial costs of reorganizing a large Federal agency alone can be staggering. Lost productivity alone is estimated in the millions, as employees and leadership divert time and focus from mission-critical projects to logistical changes, including union negotiations. These efforts often drag on longer than anticipated, especially when determining how to split responsibilities and reassign personnel. Studies have shown that large-scale reorganizations within government agencies often fail to deliver promised efficiencies, instead introducing unforeseen costs and delays. 

These disruptions would be compounded by the impacts an unnecessary reorganization would have on billions of dollars in existing DOE projects already driving economic growth, particularly in rural and often Republican-led districts, which depend on the DOE’s stability to maintain these investments. Given the high stakes, policymakers have consistently recognized the importance of a stable DOE framework to achieve the nation’s energy goals. The bipartisan passage of the 2020 Energy Act in the Senate reflects a shared understanding that DOE needs a well-equipped demonstration and deployment team to advance energy security and achieve American energy dominance. 

DOE’s Existing Structure is Already Optimized to Pursue the Energy Dominance Agenda

In President Trump’s second campaign for office, he ran on a platform of setting up the U.S. to compete with China, to improve energy affordability and reliability for Americans, and to address the strain of rising electricity demand on the grid by using artificial intelligence (AI). DOE’s existing organization structure is already optimized to pursue President Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ agenda, most of which being implemented in Republican-represented districts. 

Competition with China

As mentioned above, in response to the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), DOE created several new offices, including the Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains Office (MESC) and the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). Both of these offices are positioning the U.S. to compete with China by focusing on strengthening domestic manufacturing, supply chains, and workforce development for critical energy technologies right here at home. 

MESC is spearheading efforts to establish a secure battery manufacturing supply chain within the U.S. In September 2024, the Office announced plans to deliver over $3 billion in investments to more than 25 battery projects across 14 states. The portfolio of selected projects, once fully contracted, are projected to support over 8,000 construction jobs and over 4,000 operating jobs domestically. These projects encompass essential critical mineral processing, battery production, and recycling efforts. By investing in domestic battery infrastructure, the program reduces reliance on foreign sources, particularly China, and enhances the U.S.’s ability to compete and lead on a global scale. 

In passing BIL, Congress understood that to compete with China, R&D alone is not sufficient. The United States needs to be building large-scale demonstrations of the newest energy technologies domestically. OCED is ensuring that these technologies, and their supply chains, reach commercial scale in the U.S. to directly benefit American industry and energy consumers. OCED catalyzes private capital by sharing the financial risk of early-stage technologies which speeds up domestic innovation and counters China’s heavy state-backed funding model. In 2024 alone, OCED awarded 91 projects, in 42 U.S. states, to over 160 prize winners. By supporting first-of-a-kind or next-generation projects, OCED de-risks emerging technologies for private sector adoption, enabling quicker commercialization and global competitiveness. With additional or existing funding, OCED could create next-generation geothermal and/or advanced nuclear programs that could help unlock the hundreds of gigawatts of potential domestic energy from each technology area. 

Energy Affordability and Reliability

Another BIL-authorized DOE office, the Grid Deployment Office (GDO), is playing a crucial role in improving energy affordability and reliability for Americans through targeted investments to modernize the nation’s power grid. GDO manages billions of dollars in funding under the BIL to improve grid resilience against wildfires, extreme weather, cyberattacks, and other disruptions. Programs like the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) Program aim to enhance the reliability of the grid by supporting state-of-the-art grid infrastructure upgrades and developing new solutions to prevent outages and speed up restoration times in high-risk areas. The U.S. is in dire need of new transmission to keep costs low and maintain reliability for consumers. GDO is addressing the financial, regulatory, and technical barriers that are standing in the way of building vital transmission infrastructure.  

The Office of State and Community Energy Programs (SCEP), also part of the Office of Infrastructure, supports energy projects that help upgrade local government and residential infrastructure and lower household energy costs. Investments from BIL and IRA funding have already been distributed to states and communities, and SCEP is working to ensure that this taxpayer money is used as effectively as possible. For example, SCEP administers the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), which helps Americans in all 50 states improve energy efficiency by funding upgrades like insulation, window replacements, and modern heating systems. This program typically saves households $283 or more per year on energy costs.

Addressing Load Growth by Using AI

The DOE’s newest office, the Office of Critical and Emerging Tech (CET), leads the Department’s work on emerging areas important to national security like biotechnology, quantum, microelectronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). In April, CET partnered with several of DOE’s National Labs to produce an AI for Energy report. This report outlines DOE’s ongoing activities and the near-term potential to “safely and ethically implement AI to enable a secure, resilient power grid and drive energy innovation across the economy, while providing a skilled AI-ready energy workforce.” 

In addition to co-authoring this publication, CET partners with national labs to deploy AI-powered predictive analytics and simulation tools for addressing long-term load growth.

By deploying AI to enhance forecasting, manage grid performance, and integrate innovative energy technologies, CET ensures that the U.S. can handle our increasing energy demands while advancing grid reliability and resiliency.

The Path Forward 

DOE is already very well set up to pursue an energy dominance agenda for America. There’s simply no need to waste time conducting a large-scale agency reorganization. 

In a January 2024 Letter from the CEO, Chris Wright discusses his “straightforward business philosophy” for leading a high-functioning company. As a leader, he strives to “Hire great people and treat them like adults…” which makes Liberty Energy, his company, “successful in attracting and retaining exceptional people who together truly shine.” Secretary Wright knows how to run a successful business. He knows the “secret sauce” lies in employee satisfaction and retention. 

To apply this approach in his new role, Wright should resist tinkering with DOE’s structure, and instead, give employees a vision, and get off to the races of achieving the American energy dominance agenda without wasting time, the public’s money, and morale. Instead of redirecting resources to reorganizations, the DOE’s ample resources and existing program infrastructure should be harnessed to pursue initiatives that bolster the nation’s energy resilience and cut costs. Effective governance demands thoughtful consideration and long-term strategic alignment rather than hasty or superficial reorganizations.

The incoming administration should establish a $500 million pull-financing facility to ensure infrastructure and asset resiliency with partner nations by catalyzing the private sector to develop cutting-edge technologies. The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, which caused over $200 billion in global economic losses in 2023, is disrupting global supply chains and exacerbating migration pressures, particularly for the U.S. Investing in climate resilience abroad offers a significant opportunity for U.S. businesses in technology, engineering, and infrastructure, while also supporting job creation at home. 

Pull-finance mechanisms can maximize the efficiency and impact of U.S. investments, fostering innovation and driving sustainable solutions to address global vulnerabilities. Unlike traditional funding which second-guesses the markets by supporting only selected innovators, pull financing drives results by relying on the market to efficiently allocate resources to achievement, fostering competition and rewarding the most impactful solutions. Managed and steered by the U.S. government, the pull-financing facility would fund infrastructure and asset resiliency results delivered by the world’s cutting-edge innovators, mitigating the effects of extreme weather events and ultimately supporting U.S. interests abroad. 

Challenge and Opportunity 

The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events pose significant risks to global economic stability, with direct implications for U.S. interests. In 2023 alone, natural disasters caused over $200 billion in global economic losses with much of the damage concentrated in regions critical to global supply chains. U.S. businesses that depend on these supply chains face rising costs and disruptions, which translate into higher costs for U.S. businesses and consumers, undermining economic competitiveness.

Beyond the economic dimension, these vulnerabilities exacerbate socio-political pressures. Climate-induced displacement is accelerating, with 32.6 million people internally displaced by disasters in 2022. Most displaced individuals that cross borders migrate to countries neighboring their own, which are ill-equipped to handle the influx, often further destabilizing fragile states. For the U.S., this translates into increased migration pressures at its southern border, where natural disasters are already a driving force behind migration from Central America. Addressing these root causes through proactive resiliency investments abroad would reduce long-term strain on the U.S. and bolster stability in strategically important regions.

In addition to economic and social risks, resilience is now a key front in global competition. The People’s Republic of China has rapidly expanded its influence in developing nations through initiatives like the Belt and Road, financing over $200 billion in energy and infrastructure projects since 2013. A significant portion of these projects focus on resiliency investments, enabling China to position itself as a partner of choice for nations with asset and infrastructure exposure. This growing influence comes at the expense of U.S. global leadership.

In the context of these challenges, it is especially concerning that much of the U.S.’s existing spending may not be achieving the results it could. A recent audit of USAID climate initiatives highlights concerns around limited transparency and effectiveness in its development funding. The inefficient use of this funding is leaving opportunities on the table for U.S. businesses and workers. Global investments in adaptation and resiliency are projected to reach $500 billion annually by 2050. Resilience projects abroad could open substantial markets for American engineering, technology, and infrastructure firms. For instance, U.S.-based companies specializing in resilient agriculture, flood defense systems, advanced irrigation technologies, and energy infrastructure stand to benefit from increased demand. Domestically, the manufacturing and export of these solutions could generate significant economic activity, supporting high-quality jobs and revitalizing industrial sectors.

Pull finance presents an opportunity to increase the cost effectiveness of resiliency funding—and ensure this funding achieves U.S. interests. Pull finance mechanisms like results-based financing and Advance Market Commitments (AMC) reward successful solutions that meet specific criteria, promoting private sector engagement and market-driven problem-solving. Unlike traditional “push” financing, which funds chosen teams or projects directly, pull financing sets a goal and allows any innovator who reaches it to claim the reward, fostering      competitive problem-solving without pre-selected winners. This approach includes various mechanisms – such as prize challenges, milestone payments, advance market commitments, and subscription models – each suited to different issues and industries.

Pull financing is particularly effective for addressing complex challenges with unclear or emerging solutions, or in areas with limited commercial incentives. It has proven successful in various contexts, such as the first Trump Administration’s rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines through Operation Warp Speed and GAVI’s introduction of the pneumococcal vaccine in low-income countries. These initiatives highlight how pull financing can stimulate breakthrough innovations that efficiently address immediate needs in collaboration with private actors through effective incentives.  

Pull finance can be used to efficiently advance infrastructure and asset resilience goals while also providing opportunities for U.S. innovators and industry. By stimulating demand for critically needed technologies for development like resilient seeds and energy storage solutions, as detailed in Box 1, well-designed pull finance would help link U.S. technology innovators to addressing needs of U.S. partners. As such, pull finance can play a critical role in positioning the U.S. as a partner of first choice for countries seeking to access U.S. innovation to meet resilience needs.

What would the design of a pull financing mechanism look like in practice?  

Resilient Seeds

Agriculture in Africa is highly susceptible to extreme weather events, with limited adoption of effective farming technologies. Developing new seed varieties capable of withstanding these events and optimizing resource use has the potential to yield significant societal benefits.

While push financing can support the development of resource-efficient and productive seeds, it often lacks the ability to ensure they meet essential quality standards, like flavor and appearance, and are user-friendly across farming, transport and marketing stages. In contrast, pull financing can effectively incentivize private sector innovation across all critical dimensions, including end-user take-up. 

A pull mechanism for resilient seeds, using a milestone payment mechanism, could cover a portion of R&D costs initially, with additional payments tied to successful lab trials. Depending on the obstacles to scaling – whether they arise from the innovator/distributor side or the farmer side – a small per-user payment to the innovator or per-user subsidy could help sustain market demand.

The design and scale of a pull financing mechanism to promote the rollout of new seeds and crop varieties will largely depend on the market readiness of the various seed types involved. Establishing effective pull mechanisms for seed development is estimated to cost between $50 million and $100 million, aiming for significant outreach to farmers. Along with supporting improved livelihoods for farmers, this small investment would open opportunities for U.S. technology innovators and companies. 

Pull Finance Initiative for Infrastructure and Asset Resiliency in the Caribbean

The Caribbean is one of the regions most vulnerable to extreme weather events, making it critical to engage the private sector in developing and adopting technologies suited to Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Challenges such as limited demand and high costs hinder innovation and investment in these small markets, leaving key areas like agriculture and access underserved. Overcoming these market failures requires innovative approaches to create sustainable incentives for private sector involvement.

Pull finances offers a promising solution to drive resiliency in SIDS. By tying payments to measurable outcomes, this approach will incentivize the development and deployment of technologies that might otherwise remain inaccessible. 

For example, pull finance could be used to stimulate the creation of energy storage solutions designed to withstand extreme weather conditions in remote areas. This could be help address the critical needs of SIDS’ such as Guyana which face energy security challenges linked to extreme weather conditions, especially in remote and dispersed areas. Energy storage technologies exist, but companies are not motivated to invest in tailored innovation for local needs because end-users cannot pay prices that compensate for innovation efforts. Pull finance could address this by committing to purchase an amount large enough that nudges companies to develop a tailored product, without raising market prices. Success would require partnerships with local SMEs, caps in installation costs, and specifications on storage capacity, along with relevant technology partners such as those in the U.S.. This approach would support immediate adaptation needs and lay the foundation for sustainable, market-driven solutions that ensure long-term resilience for SIDS.

Plan of Action 

The new administration should establish a dedicated pull-financing facility to accelerate the scale-up and deployment of development solutions with partner nations. In line with other major U.S. climate initiatives, this facility could be managed by USAID’s Bureau for Resilience, Environment and Food Security (REFS), with significant support from USAID’s Innovation, Technology, and Research (ITR) Hub, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State. By leveraging USAID’s deep expertise in development and SPEC’s strategic diplomacy, this collaboration would ensure the facility addresses LMIC-specific needs while aligning with broader U.S. objectives.

The recent audit of USAID climate initiatives referenced above highlights concerns on the limited transparency and effectiveness in its climate funding. Thus, we recommend that USAID assesses the impact of its climate spending under the 2020-2024 administration and reallocates a portion of funds from less effective or stalled initiatives to this new facility. We recognize that it may be challenging to quickly identify $500 million in underperforming projects to close and reassign. Therefore, in addition to reallocating existing resources, we strongly recommend appealing to new funding for this initiative. This approach will ensure the new facility has the financial backing it needs to drive meaningful outcomes. Additional resources could also be sourced from large multilateral organizations such as the World Bank.

To enhance the facility’s impact, we recommend the active participation of agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA), particularly through the Climate and Societal Interactions Division (CSI)   in the Steering Committee,

We propose that this facility draw on the example of the UK’s planned Climate Innovation Pull Facility (CIPF), a £185 million fund which aims to fund development-relevant pull finance projects in LMICs such as those proposed by the Center for Global Development and Instiglio. This can be achieved through the following steps:

Recommendation 1. Establish the pull-finance facility, governance and administration with an initial tranche of $500 million. 

The initiative proposes establishing a pull-finance facility with an initial fund of $500 million. This facility will be overseen by a steering board chaired by USAID and comprising senior representatives from USAID, the State Department, NOOA , which will set the strategic direction and make final project selections. 

A facility management team, led by USAID, will be responsible for ensuring the successful implementation of the facility, including the selection and delivery of 8 to 16 projects. The final number of projects will depend on the launch readiness of prioritized technologies and their potential impact, with the selection process guided by criteria that align with the facility’s strategic goals. The facility management team will also be responsible for contracting with project and evaluation partners, compliance with regulations, risk management, monitoring and evaluation, as well as payouts. Additionally, the facility management team will provide incubation support for selected initiatives, including technical consultations, financial modeling, contracting expertise, and feasibility assessments.

Designing pull financing mechanisms is complex and requires input from specialized experts, including scientists, economists, and legal advisors, to identify suitable market gaps and targets. An independent Technical Advisory Group (TAG) led by USAID and comprised of such experts should be established to provide technical guidance and quality assurance. The TAG will identify priority resilience topics, such as reducing crop-residue burning or developing resilient crops. It will also focus on sectors where the U.S. can enhance its global competitiveness, which faces high upfront costs and risks. Additionally, the TAG will be responsible for technical review and recommendations of the shortlisted project proposals to inform final selection, as well as provide general advice and challenge to the facility management team and steering board.

We suggest starting with $500 million as the minimum required to be credible and relevant as well as responsive to the scale of global need. Further, experience shows that pull mechanisms need to be of sufficient scale to sustainably shift markets. For instance, GAVI’s pneumococcal vaccine AMC entailed a $1.5 billion commitment and Frontier’s carbon capture AMC likewise entails over $1 billion in commitments.  

Recommendation 2. Set up a performance management system to measure, assess and ensure impact.

The U.S. pull financing facility will implement a robust monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) framework to track and enhance its impact and drive ongoing improvement through feedback and learning. 

The facility manager will develop a logical framework (logframe) that includes key performance indicators (KPIs) and a progress and risk dashboard to track monthly performance. These tools will enable effective monitoring of progress, assessment of impact, and proactive risk management, allowing for quick responses to unexpected challenges or underperformance.

Monthly check-ins with an independent evaluation partner, along with oversight from a dedicated MEL committee, will ensure consistent and rigorous evaluation as well as continuous learning. Additionally, knowledge management and dissemination activities will facilitate the sharing of insights and best practices across the program.

Recommendation 3. Establish a knowledge management hub to facilitate the sharing of results and insights and ensure coordination across pull-financing projects. 

The hub will work closely with community partners and stakeholders – such as industry and tech leaders and manufacturers – in areas like resiliency-focused finance and innovation to build strong support and develop resources on essential topics, including the effectiveness of pull financing and optimal design strategies. Additionally, the hub will promote collaboration across projects focused on similar technological and production advancements, generating synergies that enhance their collective impact and benefits.

Once the proof of concept is established through clear evidence and learning, the facility will likely secure further stakeholder buy-in and attract additional funding for a scale up phase covering a larger portfolio of projects. 

Conclusion 

The federal government should establish a $500 million pull-financing facility to accelerate technologies for resilience in the face of growing development challenges. This initiative will unlock high-return investments and increase cost effectiveness of resiliency spending, driving economic and geopolitical goals. Managed and steered by USAID and the State Department, with support from NOOA, the facility would foster breakthroughs in critical areas like resilient infrastructure, energy, and technology, benefiting both U.S. businesses and our international partners. By investing strategically, the U.S. can ensure both national and global stability.

The authors thank FAS for the reviews and feedback, along with Ranil Dissanayake, Florence Oberholtzer, and Laura Mejia Villada for their valuable contribution to this piece.

This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.

PLEASE NOTE (February 2025): Since publication several government websites have been taken offline. We apologize for any broken links to once accessible public data.

“Under the President’s direction, every Federal department and agency is focused on strengthening the Nation’s climate resilience, including by tightening flood risk standards, strengthening building codes, scaling technology solutions, protecting and restoring our lands and waters, and integrating nature-based solutions.” – National Climate Resilience Framework 

Now more than ever, communities across the country need to adopt policies and implement projects that promote climate resilience. As climate change continues to impact the planet, extreme heat has become more frequent. To address this reality, the federal government needs to shift as much of its infrastructure investments as possible away from dark and impervious surfaces and toward cool and pervious “smart surfaces.”

By ensuring that a more substantial portion of federal infrastructure investments are designed to address extreme heat and climate change, instead of exacerbating the problem like many investments are doing now, the government can ensure healthy and livable communities. Making improvements, such as coating black asphalt roads with higher albedo products, installing cool roofs, and increasing tree and vegetative cover, results in positive social, political, and economic effects. Investments in safe and resilient communities provide numerous benefits, including better health outcomes, higher quality of life, an increase in proximal property values, and a reduction in business disruption. By making these changes, policymakers will engender significant long-term benefits within communities.

Challenge and Opportunity 

Extreme heat events—a period of high heat and humidity with temperatures above 90°F for at least two to three days—are the leading cause of weather-related fatalities in the United States among natural disasters. Recent surges in extreme heat have led to summers now commonly 5–9°F hotter city-wide, with some neighborhoods experiencing as much as 20°F higher temperatures than rural areas, an outcome commonly referred to as the urban heat island (UHI) effect. More than 80% of the U.S. population lives in cities experiencing these record-breaking temperatures. 

Extreme Heat and External Impacts 

As populations in urban areas continue to grow, their density will further increase the urban heat island effect and exacerbate heat inequities in the absence of more resilient infrastructure investments. Between 2004 and 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recorded 10,527 heat-related deaths in the United States, an average of 702 per year. In their report, the CDC emphasized that many of these deaths occurred in urban areas, particularly in low-income and communities of color. Lower-income neighborhoods commonly have fewer trees and darker surfaces, resulting in temperatures often 10–20°F hotter than wealthy neighborhoods with more trees and green infrastructure.

A wide range of other consequences result from the rise in urban heat islands. For instance, as we experience hotter days, the warming atmosphere traps in more moisture, resulting in episodes of extreme flooding. Communities are experiencing a variety of impacts such as personal property damage, infrastructure destruction, injury, and increasing morbidity and mortality. In addition to the health impacts of extreme heat, increases in urban flooding also lead to long-term impacts such as disease outbreaks and economic instability due to the destruction of businesses. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), annual damages from flooding are expected to increase by 30% by the end of the century, making it more difficult for communities, particularly low-income and communities of color, to rebuild. Implementing climate-resilient solutions for extreme heat provides multiplicative benefits that extend beyond the singular issue of heat. 

Integrating Climate Resilience in All Federal Funding Grants and Investments

As urban heat islands continue to expand in urban communities due to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and investments in dark and impervious surfaces, it is vital that the federal government integrate climate resilience into all federal funding grants and investments. Great progress has been made by the Biden Administration via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and other policy interventions that have created regulations and grant programs that promote and adopt climate-resilience policies. However, many federal investments continue to promote dark and impervious surfaces rather than requiring cooler and greener infrastructure in all projects. Investing in more sustainable resilient infrastructure is an important step toward combating urban heat islands and extreme flooding. Therefore, federal agencies such as the EPA, Department of Transportation (DOT), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Department of Energy (DOE), and others should be encouraged to adopt a standard for integrating climate resiliency into all federal projects by funding green infrastructure and cool surface projects within their programs. 

Strengthening Climate Policy 

To address extreme heat, federal agencies should fund nature-based, light-colored, and pervious surfaces and shift away from investing in darker and more impervious surfaces. This redirection of funds will increase the cost-effectiveness of investments and yield multiplicative co-benefits. 

Mitigating extreme heat through investments in green and cool infrastructure will result in better livability, enhanced water and air quality, greater environmental justice outcomes, additional tourism, expansion of good jobs, and a reduction in global warming. As an example, in 2017, New York City initiated the Cool Neighborhoods NYC program to combat heat islands by installing more than 10 million square feet of cool roofs in vulnerable communities, which also resulted in an estimated reduction of internal building temperatures by more than 30%.

Similarly, in the nation’s capital, DC Water’s 2016 revision of its consent decree to integrate green with gray infrastructure in the $2.6 billion Clean Rivers Project is set to cut combined sewer overflows by 96% at a lower cost to ratepayers than a gray-infrastructure-only solution. By implementing nature-based solutions, the DC Water investment also helps to reduce the urban heat island effect and air pollution, as well as localized surface flooding. One dollar invested in green infrastructure provides many dollars’ worth of benefits.

Plan of Action 

To combat extreme heat within communities, federal agencies and Congress should take the following steps. 

Recommendation 1. FEMA, DOT, EPA, DOE, and other agencies should continue to shift funding to climate-resilient solutions.

Agencies should continue the advancements made in the Inflation Reduction Act and shift away from providing city and state governments with funding for more dark and impervious surfaces, and instead require that all projects include green and cool infrastructure investments in addition to any gray infrastructure deemed absolutely necessary to meet project goals. These agencies should require teams to submit a justification for funding of any dark and impervious surfaces proposed for project funding. Agencies would review the justification document to determine its validity and reject it if found invalid. 

The Interagency Working Group on Extreme Heat or a similar multi agency task force should develop a guidance document to formally establish new requirements for green and cool infrastructure investments. Similar to the standards set by the Buy America and Buy Clean initiatives, the “Buy Green” document should create a plan for addressing extreme heat in federally funded projects. Once created, the document would help support additional climate-resilience frameworks such as the Advancing Climate Resilience through Climate-Smart Infrastructure Investments and Implementation Guidance memo that was released by Office of Management and Budget (OMB). While this memo provides much-needed counsel on implementing climate and smart infrastructure, its focus on extreme flooding makes it a narrow tool. The newly established Buy Green guidance will provide necessary support and information on extreme heat to implement related cool and green infrastructure. 

Recommendation 2. All federal agencies should factor in the new social cost of carbon.

In December 2023, the EPA announced an updated number for the social cost of carbon – $190 per ton – as part of a new rule to limit methane emissions. The new social cost of carbon number is not yet included in federal projects for all agencies, nor in federal grant funding applications. Not updating the social cost of carbon skews federal funding and grant investments away from more climate-friendly and resilient projects. All federal agencies should move quickly to adopt the new social cost of carbon number and use the number to determine the cost-effectiveness of project concepts at all stages of review, including in environmental impact statements prepared under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Recommendation 3. The Ecosystem Services Guidance should be fully adopted by federal agencies.

In early March 2024, the OMB released guidance to direct federal agencies to provide detailed accounts of how proposed projects, policies, and regulations could impact human welfare from the environment. The Ecosystem Services Guidance is designed to help agencies identify, measure, and discuss how their actions might have an impact on the environment through a benefit-cost analysis (BCA). We recommend that FEMA, DOT, EPA, DOE, and other funding agencies adopt and implement this guidance in their BCAs. This move would complement Recommendation 2, as factoring the new social cost of carbon into the Ecosystem Services Guidance will further encourage federal agencies to consider green infrastructure technologies and move away from funding dark and impervious surfaces. 

Recommendation 4. The Federal Highway Administration (FHA) should revise its list of standards to include and then promote green and cool infrastructure. 

The FHA has established a list of standards to help guide organizations and agencies on road construction projects. While the standards have made progress on building more resilient roadways, much of the funding that flows through FHA to states and metro areas continues to result in more dark and impervious surfaces. FHA should include standards that promote cool and green infrastructure within their specifications. These standards should include the proposed new social cost of carbon, as well as guidance developed in partnership with other agencies (FEMA, DOT, EPA, and DOE) on a variety of green infrastructure projects, including the implementation of cool pavement products, installation of roadside solar panels, conversions of mowed grass to meadows, raingardens and bioswales, etc. In addition, we also recommend that FHA strongly consider the adoption of the CarbonStar Standard. Designed to quantify the embodied carbon of concrete, the CarbonStar Standard will supplement the FHA standards and encourage the adoption of concrete with lower embodied carbon emissions. 

Recommendation 5. EPA and DOE should collaborate to increase the ENERGY STAR standard for roofing materials and issue a design innovation competition for increasing reflectivity in steep slope roofing. 

Since 1992, ENERGY STAR products have saved American families and businesses more than five trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity, avoided more than $500 billion in energy costs, and achieved four billion metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions. While this has made a large impact, the current standards for low-slope roofs of initial solar reflectance of 0.65 and three-year aged reflectance of 0.50 are too low. The cool roofing market has advanced rapidly in recent years, and according to the Cool Roof Rating Council database, there are now more than 70 low-slope roof products with an initial solar reflectance above 0.80 and a three-year aged solar reflectance of 0.70 and above. EPA and DOE should increase the requirements of the standard to support higher albedo products and improve outcomes. 

Similarly, there have been advancements in the steep slope roofing industry, and there are now more than 20 asphalt shingle products available with initial solar reflectance of 0.27 and above and three-year aged solar reflectance of 0.25 and above. EPA and DOE should consider increasing the ENERGY STAR standard for steep slope roofs to reward the higher performers in the market and incentivize them to develop products with even greater reflectivity in the future.

In addition to increasing the standards, the agency should also issue a design competition to promote greater innovation among manufacturers, in particular for steep slope roofing solutions. Authorized under the COMPETES Act, the competition would primarily focus on steep slope asphalt roofs, helping product designers develop surfaces that have a much higher reflectivity than currently exist in the marketplace (perhaps with a minimum initial solar reflectance target of 0.5, but with an award given to the highest performers). 

Recommendation 6. Congress and the IRS should reinstate the tax credit for steep slope ENERGY STAR residential roofing.

ENERGY STAR programs are managed through Congress and the IRS, who are in charge of maintaining the standards and distributing the tax credits. Though the IRA allowed for a short-term extension of the tax credit for steep slope ENERGY STAR residential roofing, the incentive has since expired. Given the massive benefits of cool roofing for energy efficiency, climate mitigation, resilience, health, and urban heat island reduction, Congress along with the IRS should move to reinstate this incentive. Because of the multiplicative benefits, this is fundamentally one of the most important incentives that EPA/DOE/IRS could offer.

Recommendation 7. DOE or DOT should conduct testing for cool pavement products.

Currently, cities looking to reduce extreme heat are increasingly looking to cool pavement coatings as a solution but do not have the capacity to conduct third-party reviews of the products and manufacturers’ claims, and they need the federal government to provide support. Claims are being made by manufacturers in terms of the aged albedo of products and also their benefits in terms of increasing road surface longevity, but to date there has been no third party analysis to verify the claims. DOE/DOT should conduct an independent third party test of the various cool pavement products available in the marketplace.

Recommendation 8. The Biden Administration should provide support for the Extreme Heat Emergency Act of 2023.

On June 12, 2023, Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) introduced the Extreme Heat Emergency Act of 2023 to amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act and include extreme heat in the definition of a major disaster. This bill is a vital piece of climate resilience legislation, as it recognizes the impact of extreme heat and seeks to address it federally. The Biden Administration, and FEMA in particular, should provide political support for the act given its transformative potential in addressing extreme heat in cities. Failing to update the list of hazards that FEMA can respond to with public assistance can amount to a de facto endorsement of policies and projects that harm our environment and economy. Congress should work with FEMA to alter the Stafford Act language to enable designating extreme heat as a major disaster. 

Recommendation 9. Create an implementation plan for a National Climate Resilience Framework. 

In September 2023, the Biden Administration issued the landmark National Climate Resilience Framework. It is our understanding that an implementation plan for the framework has not yet been developed. If that is the case, the Administration should move forward expeditiously with developing a plan that includes the proposed recommendations above and others. Ideas such as creating a standard guidance for climate resilience projects and factoring the new social cost of carbon should be included and implemented through federal investments, grants, climate action plans, legislation, and more. With help from Congress to formally enact the plan, the bill should require the Administration to issue guidance for all federal agencies referenced in the implementation plan to incorporate climate resilience in all funded projects. This would help standardize climate resilience policies to combat extreme heat and flooding.

Cost Estimates 

This proposal is largely focused on redirecting current appropriations to more resilient solutions rather than requiring more budget capacity. Agencies such as FEMA, DOT, EPA, and DOE should redirect funds allocated in infrastructure budgets and grant programs that promote dark and impervious surfaces to green and cool infrastructure projects. Items that will incur additional costs are including heat in FEMA’s definitions of natural disasters, the suggested cool roof design innovation competition, and the analysis of cool pavement technologies.

Conclusion 

Combating extreme heat urgently requires us to address climate resilient infrastructure at the federal level. Without the necessary changes to adopt green and cooler technologies and create a national resilience framework implementation plan, urban heat islands will continue to intensify in cities. Without a dedicated focus from the federal government, extreme heat will continue to create dangerous temperatures and also further disparities affecting low-income and communities of color who already do not have the adequate resources to stay cool. Shifting federal investments to address extreme heat through green and resilient infrastructure extends beyond political lines and would greatly benefit from policymaker support.

This idea of merit originated from our Extreme Heat Ideas Challenge. Scientific and technical experts across disciplines worked with FAS to develop potential solutions in various realms: infrastructure and the built environment, workforce safety and development, public health, food security and resilience, emergency planning and response, and data indices. Review ideas to combat extreme heat here.

Have you ever noticed a lack of tree cover in certain areas of a city? Have you ever visited a city and been advised to avoid certain districts or communities? Perhaps you even recall these visual shifts occurring immediately after crossing a particular road or highway? 

If so, what you experienced was likely by design:

In the early 20^th century, Black communities across the U.S. were subjected to economic constraint and social isolation through housing policies that mandated segregation. Black communities were systematically excluded from the housing benefits offered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Homeowners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). The HOLC served as the basis of the National Housing Act of 1934, which ratified the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). 

Housing policy discrimination was further exacerbated by the FHA refusing to insure mortgages near and within Black neighborhoods. The HOLC provided lenders with maps that circled areas with sizeable black populations with red markers—a practice now referred to as redlining. While the systematic practice of redlining ended in 1968 under The Fair Housing Act of 1968, redlining continues to economically impair over 11 million Americans—and less than half are Black.

You are probably thinking (1) how is this possible? (2) How could a defunct 20^th-century policy designed to discriminate against Black communities still impact over 11 million—mostly non-Black—Americans today? The answer is the same for both questions: place-based discrimination.

Policies such as redlining are designed to worsen the material conditions of a target group by preventing investment in the places where they live. Over time, this results in physical locations that are systemically denied access to features such as loans, enterprise, and ecosystem services  simply due to their location or place. Place-based discrimination is the principal mechanism of redlining effects, and consequently, costs taxpayers millions of dollars per year.

What is the problem?

Starting in the 1990s, during the Clinton Administration, billions of dollars in tax credits were devoted towards community development and economic growth through the use of special tax credits that attract private investments (Table 1). One of the principal agents from this funding to address place-based discrimination was the creation of Community Development Entities (CDEs). According to the New Markets Tax Credit Coalition, CDEs are private entities that have “demonstrated” an interest in serving or providing capital to low-income- communities (LICs) and individuals (LIIs). Once certified, CDEs are eligible to apply for a special tax credit, New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC), through the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Fund. 

However, this program, and others like it, have had a negligible impact on addressing the systemic implications of redlining . A recent Urban Institute report found that inequity in capital flow and investment trends within cities (i.e., Chicago) is driven by residential lending patterns. Highlighting the inequalities that exist between investment among neighborhoods with different racial and income demographics, the analysts surmise that redressing economic downturn involves expanding investments into divested neighborhoods. To date, more than $71 billion have been awarded to CDE’s, and yet, historically-redlined areas remain economically desolate. If these programs are intended to economically revitalize historically-redlined areas, then these programs are not doing what they are supposed to do.

One example of this is the city of Philadelphia:

Philadelphia, a city in the top ten for redlined populations, possesses tens of thousands of vacant buildings and lots that are overlaid by redlining and riddled with brownfield sites. According to the Philadelphia Office of the Controller, historically redlined communities of Philadelphia continue to experience disproportionate amounts of poverty, poor health outcomes, limited educational attainment, unemployment, and violent crime compared to non-redlined areas in the city.

By analyzing HOLC assessment grades (1937) and New Market Tax Credit (NMTC) Program Eligibility (i.e., PolicyMap, projects from 2015-2019) for Philadelphia, PA, I found that of the 30+ Qualified Low-Income Community Investments (QLICIs) in historically-redlined areas, totaling over $400 million in tax credits, none are categorized as Community Development Entities (CDEs).

1937 vs. 2019

HOLC assessment grades (1937) vs. New Market Tax Credit (NMTC) Program Eligibility

1937 and 2019 overlaid

Of the 30+ Qualified Low-Income Community Investments (QLICIs) in historically-redlined areas, totaling over $400 million in tax credits, none are categorized as Community Development Entities (CDEs).

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia City Council just passed a budget that allocates a record $788 million to the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD). Recent studies show that fatal encounters with police are more likely to occur within historically-redlined areas. It appears the nicest buildings in redlined areas may very well be police stations.

Yet, public investment has been more concerned with maintaining systems of oppression than reversing them. Why continue to invest in systems that do not create wealth? No matter your perception of American policing, the following is clear: policing does not create wealth for distressed communities.  

Currently, there are 200+ cities and thousands of communities that are, like Philadelphia, enduring the systemic implications of redlining. 

What would happen if public investments were allocated towards restorative policy actions within historically-redlined areas?

A federal program that amalgamates the best elements of community-driven inventiveness into a vehicle for innovative and sustainable economic development. That is, a program that promotes economic revitalization of historically-redlined communities through multipurpose, community-owned enterprises called Innovative Neighborhood Markets (INMs).

What is the policy action?

One thing that urban policy initiatives have made clear, is that distressed communities are prime real-estate targets for private developers . A new federal effort could ensure that investment opportunities are also accessible to community members seeking to launch place-based businesses and enterprises. Businesses and enterprises of this sort will not only reduce urban blight in historically-redlined communities, but also serve as avenues for the direct state, local, and private investment needed to address historical inequities. 

The Biden-Harris Administration can combat redlining through a placed-based community investment program, coined Putting Redlines in the Green: Economic Revitalization Through Innovative Neighborhood Markets (PRITG), that affords historically-redlined communities the ability to establish their own profitable enterprise before outside parties (i.e., private developers).

These Innovative Neighborhood Markets (INMs) would be resource hubs that provide affordable grocery items (i.e., fresh produce, meats, dairy, etc.); an outlet for residents of the community to market goods and services (i.e., small businesses); and create cross-sector initiatives that build community enterprise and increase greenspace (i.e., Farm to Neighborhood Model [F2NM], parks, gardens, and tree cover). Most importantly, INM’s are community owned. Through community governance, the community elects and authorizes the types of place-based businesses and enterprises that are present within their INM.

Do you remember the Philadelphia example from earlier? 

Under PTRIG, a number of those underutilized structures or vacant spaces are transformed into a vested, profitable, and sustainable community resource. The majority of the financial capital remains within the community, and economic gains are partially earmarked for community revitalization (i.e., soil remediation for brownfield sites, community restoration, and construction of greenspace).

All Taxpayers Benefit

By legally and financially empowering communities with ownership, PRITG will incentivize investment and development that can actually reduce taxpayer liability. For example, the INM can generate the funding to invest in more attractive (and expensive) treecover and landscaping that will reduce the impact of heat islands and imperviousness related to redlining, thereby reducing taxpayer liability by more than $308 million dollars per year. Implementation of PTRIG will decrease taxpayer burden through profit-driven and self-supporting community services. 

“Fair and Equal” Access 

Another beneficial aspect of this policy involves increasing community access to financial provisions without third-party obstacles (i.e., CDEs and CDFIs). Black and Hispanic home loan applicants are charged higher interest rates than White home loan applicants, resulting in  Black and Hispanic borrowers paying $765 million in additional interest per year. Discriminatory practices only succeed in worsening community divestment and increasing the resident displacement which disproportionately impact minority residents. Through the economic-agency provided by PRITG, historically-redlined communities would have heightened protection against lending discrimination, gentrification, and displacement. 

Moreover, PTRIG would reinforce the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)’s Combating Redlining Initiative in ensuring that formerly redlined neighborhoods receive “fair and equal access” to the lending opportunities that are—and always have been—available  to non-redlined, and majority-White, neighborhoods. 

While INMs possess aspects of grocery stores, community banks, business improvement districts (BIDs), and farmers markets, they would differ in one particular area: community wealth.

What is Community Wealth?

As someone who grew up in Champaign, Illinois (Douglas Park), and whose family currently lives in a historically-redlined community (Lansing, MI), it brings me peace to reimagine my community with an INM.

Until my early 20’s, I spent most of my life largely unaware of the importance of community wealth on individual empowerment and its impact on the maintenance of cultural identity. For me, reimagining my community with an INM is not just about correcting the past, it is about enriching the uniqueness of what makes our home, Home.

In general, a community wealth building process needs to address the lack of an asset in a way that builds community sustainability. That is the materialization of a communal epicenter(s) that produces a sense of ownership and pride.

So how would INMs build community wealth? Simple. The community, as a whole, would be defined as the ownership group. Each community member would be legally referenced as a shareholder of this newly acquired, financially-appreciating, community-owned enterprise. 

Community Ownership Key to Community Wealth

According to Evan Absher, Chief Executive Officer at Folks Capital, there are currently two broad ways of understanding community ownership. 

The first type involves community ownership in the form of trusts or fiduciary arrangements between a community entity and an independent financial establishment. This structure creates a community entity that holds the financial wealth and is subject to some form of community governance. This structure includes entities such as Community Investment Trusts, Community Land Trusts, and Mixed-Income Neighborhood Trust. These structures ensure permanent and lasting control of the land and fidelity to charitable purposes. However, these entities often do not increase actual ownership or produce meaningful wealth at the individual or family levels. Further, they are often nonprofits and can struggle with attracting capital and sustainability.  

The second type of community ownership is specifically targeted at individuals and families. These are models that focus on financial agency and ownership of land and property by people within communities. This concept includes models such as employee-ownership, Co-operatives, ROC-USA’s model, and Folks Capital’s Neighborhood Equity Model. These models have an advantage in wealth building and agency for the families involved. The benefit of this second concept of  community ownership is that community members have the autonomy to (1) choose to sell their ownership share back to the community fund; (2) receive pro rata (dividend) payments; and/or (3) if the community chooses, sell the enterprise to “would-be gentrifiers.” 

Regardless, the community receives more empowerment than was ever offered by previous economic revitalization models (i.e., Opportunity Zones) [See Table 1]. However these models sometimes lack the permanence or control of the other models. If not structured thoughtfully, this lack of control poses a risk of further gentrification.

Regardless of the approach, all models should seek first to center communities and people in the governance and benefits of the model. Institutionalizing models is not the objective. Closing the wealth gap and ending disparities in economic, health, and education outcomes are the ultimate goal. 

However, an important question is raised by this policy: who counts as community—especially when talking about the ownership of an individual building?

Are multiple communities expected to be consolidated into one community for the sake of ease? Would that be fair to those communities?

The challenge is making ownership meaningful. Understandably, a resident may possess more pride if their stake in an INM is $1000 opposed to 20 cents. 

Thus, communities that are smaller in size may be most benefited by the establishment of an INM. This is not to say that large historically-redlined areas do not stand to gain from INM establishment. Quite the contrary. INMs are designed to not only enfranchise the local communities , but also revitalize the place through restorative, economic, and environmental justice. 

Nevertheless, if PTRIG is to provide communities with tools that guarantee full community empowerment, then factors of community ownership should be considered. 

Now, one final question remains, and it can only be answered by those within historically-redlined communities: “Who is your community?”

Executive Summary

In November 2021, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which included $550 billion in new funding for dozens of new programs across the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). Alongside historic investments in America’s roads and bridges, the bill created the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Infrastructure (ARPA-I). Building on successful models like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Advanced Research Program-Energy (ARPA-E), ARPA-I’s mission is to bring the nation’s most innovative technology solutions to bear on our most significant transportation infrastructure challenges.

ARPA-I must navigate America’s uniquely complex infrastructure landscape, characterized by limited federal research and development funding compared to other sectors, public sector ownership and stewardship, and highly fragmented and often overlapping ownership structures that include cities, counties, states, federal agencies, the private sector, and quasi-public agencies. Moreover, the new agency needs to integrate the strong culture, structures, and rigorous ideation process that ARPAs across government have honed since the 1950s. This report is a primer on how ARPA-I, and its stakeholders, can leverage this unique opportunity to drive real, sustainable, and lasting change in America’s transportation infrastructure.

How to Use This Report

This report highlights the opportunity ARPA-I presents; orients those unfamiliar with the transportation infrastructure sector to the unique challenges it faces; provides a foundational understanding of the ARPA model and its early-stage program design; and empowers experts and stakeholders to get involved in program ideation. However, individual sections can be used as standalone tools depending on the reader’s prior knowledge of and intended involvement with ARPA-I.

• If you are unfamiliar with the background, authorization, and mission of ARPA-I, refer to the section “An Opportunity for Transportation Infrastructure Innovation.”

• If you are relatively new to the transportation infrastructure sector, refer to the section “Unique Challenges of the Transportation Infrastructure Landscape.”

• If you have prior transportation infrastructure experience or expertise but are new to the ARPA model, you can move directly to the sections beginning with “Core Tenets of ARPA Success.”

An Opportunity for Transportation Infrastructure Innovation

In November 2021, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) authorizing the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Infrastructure (ARPA-I), among other new programs. ARPA-I’s mission is to advance U.S. transportation infrastructure by developing innovative science and technology solutions that:

• lower the long-term cost of infrastructure development, including costs of planning, construction, and maintenance; 

• reduce the life cycle impacts of transportation infrastructure on the environment, including through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions; 

• contribute significantly to improving the safe, secure, and efficient movement of goods and people; and

• promote the resilience of infrastructure from physical and cyber threats.

ARPA-I will achieve this goal by supporting research projects that:

• advance novel, early-stage research with practicable application to transportation infrastructure;

• translate techniques, processes, and technologies, from the conceptual phase to prototype, testing, or demonstration;

• develop advanced manufacturing processes and technologies for the domestic manufacturing of novel transportation-related technologies; and

• accelerate transformational technological advances in areas in which industry entities are unlikely to carry out projects due to technical and financial uncertainty.

ARPA-I is the newest addition to a long line of successful ARPAs that continue to deliver breakthrough innovations across the defense, intelligence, energy, and health sectors. The U.S. Department of Defense established the pioneering Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1958 in response to the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite to develop and demonstrate high-risk, high-reward technologies and capabilities to ensure U.S. military technological superiority and confront national security challenges. Throughout the years, DARPA programs have been responsible for significant technological advances with implications beyond defense and national security, such as the early stages of the internet, the creation of the global positioning system (GPS), and the development of mRNA vaccines critical to combating COVID-19. 

In light of the many successful advancements seeded through DARPA programs, the government replicated the ARPA model for other critical sectors, resulting in the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy within the Department of Energy, and, most recently, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health (ARPA-H) within the Department of Health and Human Services.

Now, there is the opportunity to bring that same spirit of untethered innovation to solve the most pressing transportation infrastructure challenges of our time. The United States has long faced a variety of transportation infrastructure-related challenges, due in part to low levels of federal research and development (R&D) spending in this area; the fragmentation of roles across federal, state, and local government; risk-averse procurement practices; and sluggish commercial markets. These challenges include:

• Roadway safety. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an estimated 42,915 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2021, up 10.5% from 2020.

• Transportation emissions. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the transportation sector accounted for 27% of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2020, more than any other sector.

• Aging infrastructure and maintenance. According to the 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure produced by the American Society of Civil Engineers, 42% of the nation’s bridges are at least 50 years old and 7.5% are “structurally deficient.”

The Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus Appropriations Bill awarded ARPA-I its initial appropriation in early 2023. Yet even before that, the Biden-Harris Administration saw the potential for ARPA-I-driven innovations to help meet its goal of net-zero GHG emissions by 2050, as articulated in its Net-Zero Game Changers Initiative. In particular, the Administration identified smart mobility, clean and efficient transportation systems, next-generation infrastructure construction, advanced electricity infrastructure, and clean fuel infrastructure as “net-zero game changers” that ARPA-I could play an outsize role in helping develop.

For ARPA-I programs to reach their full potential, agency stakeholders and partners need to understand not only how to effectively apply the ARPA model but how the unique circumstances and challenges within transportation infrastructure need to be considered in program design.

Unique Challenges of the Transportation Infrastructure Landscape

Using ARPA-I to advance transportation infrastructure breakthroughs requires an awareness of the most persistent challenges to prioritize and the unique set of circumstances within the sector that can hinder progress if ignored. Below are summaries of key challenges and considerations for ARPA-I to account for, followed by a deeper analysis of each challenge.

• Federal R&D spending on transportation infrastructure is considerably lower than other sectors, such as defense, healthcare, and energy, as evidenced by federal spending as a percentage of that sector’s contribution to gross domestic product (GDP). 

• The transportation sector sees significant private R&D investment in vehicle and aircraft equipment but minimal investment in transportation infrastructure because the benefits from those investments are largely public rather than private.

• Market fragmentation within the transportation system is a persistent obstacle to progress, resulting in reliance on commercially available technologies and transportation agencies playing a more passive role in innovative technology development.

• The fragmented market and multimodal nature of the sector pose challenges for allocating R&D investments and identifying customers.

Lower Federal R&D Spending in Transportation Infrastructure 

Federal R&D expenditures in transportation infrastructure lag behind those in other sectors. This gap is particularly acute because, unlike for some other sectors, federal transportation R&D expenditures often fund studies and systems used to make regulatory decisions rather than technological innovation. The table below compares actual federal R&D spending and sector expenditures for 2019 across defense, healthcare, energy, and transportation as a percentage of each sector’s GDP. The federal government spends orders of magnitude less on transportation than other sectors: energy R&D spending as a percentage of sector GDP is nearly 15 times higher than transportation, while health is 13 times higher and defense is nearly 38 times higher.

Public Sector Dominance Limits Innovation Investment 

Since 1990, total investment in U.S. R&D has increased by roughly 9 times. When looking at the source of R&D investment over the same period, the private and public sectors invested approximately the same amount of R&D funding in 1982, but today the rate of R&D investment is nearly 4 times greater for the private industry than the government. 

While there are problems with the bulk of R&D coming from the private sector, such as innovations to promote long-term public goods being overlooked because of more lucrative market incentives, industries that receive considerable private R&D funding still see significant innovation breakthroughs. For example, the medical industry saw $161.8 billion in private R&D funding in 2020 compared to only $61.5 billion from federal funding. More than 75% of this private industry R&D occurred within the biopharmaceutical sector where corporations have profit incentives to be at the cutting edge of advancements in medicine.

The transportation sector has one robust domain for private R&D investment: vehicle and aircraft equipment manufacturing. In 2018, total private R&D was $52.6 billion. Private sector transportation R&D focuses on individual customers and end users, creating better vehicles, products, and efficiencies. The vast majority of that private sector R&D does not go toward infrastructure because the benefits are largely public rather than private. Put another way, the United States invests more than 50 times the amount of R&D into vehicles than the infrastructure systems upon which those vehicles operate. 

Market Fragmentation across Levels of Government

Despite opportunities within the public-dominated transportation infrastructure system, market fragmentation is a persistent obstacle to rapid progress. Each level of government has different actors with different objectives and responsibilities. For instance, at the federal level, USDOT provides national-level guidance, policy, and funding for transportation across aviation, highway, rail, transit, ports, and maritime modes. Meanwhile, the states set goals, develop transportation plans and projects, and manage transportation networks like the interstate highway system. Metropolitan planning organizations take on some of the planning functions at the regional level, and local governments often maintain much of their infrastructure. There are also local individual agencies that operate facilities like airports, ports, or tollways organized at the state, regional, or local level. Programs that can use partnerships to cut across this tapestry of systems are essential to driving impact at scale. 

Local agencies have limited access and capabilities to develop cross-sector technologies. They have access to limited pools of USDOT funding to pilot technologies and thus generally rely on commercially available technologies to increase the likelihood of pilot success. One shortcoming of this current process is that both USDOT and infrastructure owner-operators (IOOs) play a more passive role in developing innovative technologies, instead depending on merely deploying market-ready technologies. 

Multiple Modes, Customers, and Jurisdictions Create Difficulties in Efficiently Allocating R&D Resources

The transportation infrastructure sector is a multimodal environment split across many modes, including aviation, maritime, pipelines, railroads, roadways (which includes biking and walking), and transit. Each mode includes various customers and stakeholders to be considered. In addition, in the fragmented market landscape federal, state, and local departments of transportation have different—and sometimes competing—priorities and mandates. This dynamic creates difficulties in allocating R&D resources and considering access to innovation across these different modes.

Customer identification is not “one size fits all” across existing ARPAs. For example, DARPA has a laser focus on delivering efficient innovations for one customer: the Department of Defense. For ARPA-E, it is less clear; their customers range from utility companies to homeowners looking to benefit from lower energy costs. ARPA-I would occupy a space in between these two cases, understanding that its end users are IOOs—entities responsible for deploying infrastructure in many cases at the local or regional level. 

However, even with this more direct understanding of its customers, a shortcoming of a system focused on multiple modes is that transportation infrastructure is very broad, occupying everything from self-healing concrete to intersection safety to the deployment of electrified mobility and more. Further complicating matters is the rapid evolution of technologies and expectations across all modes, along with the rollout of entirely new modes of transportation. These developments raise questions about where new technologies and capabilities fit in existing modal frameworks, what actors in the transportation infrastructure market should lead their development, and who the ultimate “customers” or end users of innovation are.

Having a matrixed understanding of the rapid technological evolution across transportation modes and their potential customers is critical to investing in and building infrastructure for the future, given that transportation infrastructure investments not only alter a region’s movement of people and goods but also fundamentally impact its development. ARPA-I is poised to shape learnings across and in partnership with USDOT’s modes and various offices to ensure the development and refinement of underlying technologies and approaches that serve the needs of the entire transportation system and users across all modes.

Core Tenets of ARPA Success

Success using the ARPA model comes from demonstrating new innovative capabilities, building a community of people (an “ecosystem”) to carry the progress forward, and having the support of key decision-makers. Yet the ARPA model can only be successful if its program directors (PDs), fellows, stakeholders, and other partners understand the unique structure and inherent flexibility required when working to create a culture conducive to spurring breakthrough innovations. From a structural and cultural standpoint, the ARPA model is unlike any other agency model within the federal government, including all existing R&D agencies. Partners and other stakeholders should embrace the unique characteristics of an ARPA.

Cultural Components

ARPAs should take risks. 

An ARPA portfolio may be the closest thing to a venture capital portfolio in the federal government. They have a mandate to take big swings so should not be limited to projects that seem like safe bets. ARPAs will take on many projects throughout their existence, so they should balance quick wins with longer-term bets while embracing failure as a natural part of the process.

ARPAs should constantly evaluate and pivot when necessary.

An ARPA needs to be ruthless in its decision-making process because it has the ability to maneuver and shift without the restriction of initial plans or roadmaps. For example, projects around more nascent technology may require more patience, but if assessments indicate they are not achieving intended outcomes or milestones, PDs should not be afraid to terminate those projects and focus on other new ideas.

ARPAs should stay above the political fray. 

ARPAs can consider new and nontraditional ways to fund innovation, and thus should not be caught up in trends within their broader agency. As different administrations onboard, new offices get built and partisan priorities may shift, but ARPAs should limit external influence on their day-to-day operations.

ARPA team members should embrace an entrepreneurial mindset. 

PDs, partners, and other team members need to embrace the creative freedom required for success and operate much like entrepreneurs for their programs. Valued traits include a propensity toward action, flexibility, visionary leadership, self-motivation, and tenacity.

ARPA team members must move quickly and nimbly.

Trying to plan out the agency’s path for the next two years, five years, 10 years, or beyond is a futile effort and can be detrimental to progress. ARPAs require ultimate flexibility from day to day and year to year. Compared to other federal initiatives, ARPAs are far less bureaucratic by design, and forcing unnecessary planning and bureaucracy on the agency will slow progress.

Collegiality must be woven into the agency’s fabric.

With the rapidly shifting and entrepreneurial nature of ARPA work, the federal staff, contractors, and other agency partners need to rely on one another for support and assistance to seize opportunities and continue progressing as programs mature and shift. 

Outcomes matter more than following a process.

ARPA PDs must be free to explore potential program and project ideas without any predetermination. The agency should support them in pursuing big and unconventional ideas unrestricted by a particular process. While there is a process to turn their most unconventional and groundbreaking ideas into funded and functional projects, transformational ideas are more important than the process itself during idea generation.

ARPA team members welcome feedback.

Things move quickly in an ARPA, and decisions must match that pace, so individuals such as fellows and PDs must work together to offer as much feedback as possible. Constructive pushback helps avoid blind alleys and thus makes programs stronger.

Structural Components

The ARPA Director sets the vision.

The Director’s vision helps attract the right talent and appropriate levels of ambition and focus areas while garnering support from key decision-makers and luminaries. This vision will dictate the types and qualities of PDs an ARPA will attract to execute within that vision.

PDs can make or break an ARPA and set the technical direction.

Because the power of the agency lies within its people, ARPAs are typically flat organizations. An ARPA should seek to hire the best and most visionary thinkers and builders as PDs, enable them to determine and design good programs, and execute with limited hierarchical disruption. During this process, PDs should engage with decision-makers in the early stages of the program design to understand the needs and realities of implementers.

Contracting helps achieve goals.

The ARPA model allows PDs to connect with universities, companies, nonprofits, organizations, and other areas of government to contract necessary R&D. This allows the program to build relationships with individuals without needing to hire or provide facilities or research laboratories. 

Interactions improve outcomes. 

From past versions of ARPA that attempted remote and hybrid environments, it became evident that having organic collisions across an ARPA’s various roles and programs is important to achieving better outcomes. For example, ongoing in-person interactions between and among PDs and technical advisors are critical to idea generation and technical project and program management. 

Staff transitions must be well facilitated to retain institutional knowledge. 

One of ARPA’s most unique structural characteristics is its frequent turnover. PDs and fellows are term-limited, and ARPAs are designed to turn over those key positions every few years as markets and industries evolve, so having thoughtful transition processes in place is vital, including considering the role of systems engineering and technical assistance (SETA) contractors in filling knowledge gaps, cultivating an active alumni network, and staggered hiring cycles so that large numbers of PDs and fellows are not all exiting their service at once.

Scaling should be built into the structure.

It cannot be assumed that if a project is successful, the private sector will pick that technology up and help it scale. Instead, an ARPA should create its own bridge to scaling in the form of programs dedicated to funding projects proven in a test environment to scale their technology for real-world application. 

Technology-to-market advisors play a pivotal role.

Similarly to the dedicated funding for scaling described above, technology-to-market advisors are responsible for thinking about how projects make it to the real world. They should work hand in hand with PDs even in the early stages of program development to provide perspectives on how projects might commercialize and become market-ready. Without this focus, technologies run the risk of dying on the vine—succeeding technically, but failing commercially. 

A Primer on ARPA Ideation

Tackling grand challenges in transportation infrastructure through ARPA-I requires understanding what is unique about its program design. This process begins with considering the problem worth solving, the opportunity that makes it a ripe problem to solve, a high-level idea of an ARPA program’s fit in solving it, and a visualization of the future once this problem has been solved. This process of early-stage program ideation requires a shift in one’s thinking to find ideas for innovative programs that fit the ARPA model in terms of appropriate ambition level and suitability for ARPA structure and objectives. It is also an inherently iterative process, so while creating a “wireframe” outlining the problem, opportunity, program objectives, and future vision may seem straightforward, it can take months of refining. 

Common Challenges

No clear diagnosis of the problem

Many challenges facing our transportation infrastructure system are not defined by a single problem; rather, they are a conglomeration of issues that simultaneously need addressing. An effective program will not only isolate a single problem to tackle, but it will approach it at a level where something can be done to solve it through root cause analysis.

Thinking small and narrow

On the other hand, problems being considered for ARPA programs can be isolated down to the point that solving them will not drive transformational change. In this situation, narrow problems would not cater to a series of progressive and complementary projects that would fit an ARPA.

Incorrect framing of opportunities:

When doing early-stage program design, opportunities are sometimes framed as “an opportunity to tackle a problem.” Rather, an opportunity should reflect a promising method, technology, or approach already in existence but which would benefit from funding and resources through an advanced research agency program.

Approaching solutions solely from a regulatory or policy angle

While regulations and policy changes are a necessary and important component of tackling challenges in transportation infrastructure, approaching issues through this lens is not the mandate of an ARPA. ARPAs focus on supporting breakthrough innovations in developing new methods, technologies, capabilities, and approaches. Additionally, regulatory approaches to problem-solving can often be subject to lengthy policy processes.

No explicit ARPA role

An ARPA should pursue opportunities to solve problems where, without its intervention, breakthroughs may not happen within a reasonable timeframe. If the public or private sector already has significant interest in solving a problem, and they are well on their way to developing a transformational solution in a few years or less, then ARPA funding and support might provide a higher value-add elsewhere.

Lack of throughline

The problems identified for ARPA program consideration should be present as themes throughout the opportunities chosen to solve them as well as how programs are ultimately structured. Otherwise, a program may lack a targeted approach to solving a particular challenge.

Forgetting about end users

Human-centered design should be at the heart of how ARPA programs are scoped, especially when considering the scale at which designers need to think about how solving a problem will provide transformational change for everyday users.

Being solutions-oriented

Research programs should not be built with predetermined solutions in mind; they should be oriented around a specific problem to ensure that any solutions put forward are targeted and effective.

Not being realistic about direct outcomes of the program

Program objectives should not simply restate the opportunity, nor should they jump to where the world will be many years after the program has run its course. They should separate the tactical elements of a program and what impact they will ultimately drive. Designers should consider their program as one key step in a long arc of commercialization and adoption, with a firm sense of who needs to act and what needs to happen to make a program objective a reality.

Keeping these common mistakes in mind throughout the design process ensures that programs are properly scoped, appropriately ambitious, and in line with the agency’s goals. With these guideposts in mind, idea generators should begin their program design in the form of a wireframe.

Wireframe Development 

The first phase in ARPA program development is creating a program wireframe, which is an outline of a potential program that captures key components for consideration to assess the program’s fit and potential impact. The template below shows the components characteristic of a program wireframe.

Wireframe template

To create a fully fleshed-out wireframe, program directors work backward by first envisioning a future state that would be truly transformational for society and across sectors if it were to be realized. Then, they identify a clearly-articulated problem that needs solving and is hindering progress toward this transformational future state. During this process, PDs need to conduct extensive root cause analysis to consider whether the problem they’ve identified is exacerbated by policy, regulatory, or environmental complications—as opposed to those that technology can already solve. This will inform whether a problem is something that ARPA-I has the opportunity to impact fundamentally. 

Next, program directors identify a promising opportunity—such as a method, approach, or technology—that, if developed, scaled, and implemented, would solve the problem they articulated and help achieve their proposed future state. When considering a promising opportunity, PDs must assess whether it front-runs other potential technologies that would also need developing to support it and whether it is feasible to achieve concrete results within three to five years and with an average program budget. Additionally, it is useful to think about whether an opportunity considered for program development is part of a larger cohort of potential programs that lie within an ARPA-I focus area that could all be run in parallel.

Most importantly, before diving into how to solve the problem, PDs need to articulate what has prevented this opportunity from already being solved, scaled, and implemented, and what explicit role or need there is for a federal R&D agency to step in and lead the development of technologies, methods, or approaches to incentivize private sector deployment and scaling. For example, if the private sector is already incentivized to, and capable of, taking the lead on developing a particular technology and it will achieve market readiness within a few years, then there is less justification for an ARPA intervention in that particular case. On the other hand, the prescribed solution to the identified problem may be so nascent that what is needed is more early-stage foundational R&D, in which case an ARPA program would not be a good fit. This area should be reserved as the domain of more fundamental science-based federal R&D agencies and offices.

One example to illustrate this maturity fit is DARPA investment in mRNA. While the National Institutes of Health contributed significantly to initial basic research, DARPA recognized the technological gap in being able to quickly scale and manufacture therapeutics, prompting the agency to launch the Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics (ADEPT) program to develop technologies to respond to infectious disease threats. Through ADEPT, in 2011 DARPA awarded a fledgling Moderna Therapeutics with $25 million to research and develop its messenger RNA therapeutics platform. Nine years later, Moderna became the second company after Pfizer-BioNTech to receive an Emergency Use Authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine.

Another example is DARPA’s role in developing the internet as we know it, which was not originally about realizing the unprecedented concept of a ubiquitous, global communications network. What began as researching technologies for interlinking packet networks led to the development of ARPANET, a pioneering network for sharing information among geographically separated computers. DARPA then contracted BBN Technologies to build the first routers before becoming operational in 1969. This research laid the foundation for the internet. The commercial sector has since adopted ARPANET’s groundbreaking results and used them to revolutionize communication and information sharing across the globe.

Wireframe Refinement and Iteration

To guide program directors through successful program development, George H. Heilmeier, who served as the director of DARPA from 1975 to 1977, used to require that all PDs answer the following questions, known as the Heilmeier Catechism, as part of their pitch for a new program. These questions should be used to refine the wireframe and envision what the program could look like. In particular, wireframe refinement should examine the first three questions before expanding to the remaining questions.

• What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.

• How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?

• What is new in your approach, and why do you think it will be successful?

• Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?

• What are the risks?

• How much will it cost?

• How long will it take?

• What are the midterm and final “exams” to check for success?

Alongside the Heilmeier Catechism, a series of assessments and lines of questioning should be completed to pressure test and iterate once the wireframe has been drafted. This refinement process is not one-size-fits-all but consistently grounded in research, discussions with experts, and constant questioning to ensure program fit. The objective is to thoroughly analyze whether the problem we are seeking to solve is the right one and whether the full space of opportunities around that problem is ripe for ARPA intervention.

One way to think about determining whether a wireframe could be a program is by asking, “Is this wireframe science or is this science fiction?” In other words, is the proposed technology solution at the right maturity level for an ARPA to make it a reality? There is a relatively broad range in the middle of the technological maturity spectrum that could be an ARPA program fit, but the extreme ends of that spectrum would not be a good fit, and thus those wireframes would need further iteration or rejection. On the far left end of the spectrum would be basic research that only yields published papers or possibly a prototype. On the other extreme would be a technology that is already developed to the point that only full-scale implementation is needed. Everything that falls between could be suitable for an ARPA program topic area.  

Once a high-impact program has been designed, the next step is to rigorously pressure test and develop a program until it resembles an executable ARPA program.

Applying ARPA Frameworks to Transportation Infrastructure Challenges

By using this framework, any problem or opportunity within transportation infrastructure can be evaluated for its fit as an ARPA-level idea. Expert and stakeholder idea generation is essential to creating an effective portfolio of ARPA-I programs, so idea generators must be armed with this framework and a defined set of focus areas to develop promising program wireframes. An initial set of focus areas for ARPA-I includes safety, climate and resilience, and digitalization, with equity and accessibility as underlying considerations within each focus area. 

There are hundreds of potential topic areas that ARPA-I could tackle; the two wireframes below represent examples of early-stage program ideas that would benefit from further pressure testing through the program design iteration cycle.

Note: The following wireframes are samples intended to illustrate ARPA ideation and the wireframing process, and do not represent potential research programs or topics under consideration by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Next-Generation Resilient Infrastructure Management

A Digital Inventory of Physical Infrastructure and Its Uses

Wireframe Development Next Steps

After initial wireframe development, further exploration is needed to pressure test an idea and ensure that it can be developed into a viable program to achieve “moonshot” ambitions. Wireframe authors should consider the following factors when iterating:

• The Heilmeier Catechism questions (see page 14) and whether the wireframe needs to be updated or revised as they seek to answer each of the Heilmeier Catechism questions
• Common challenges wireframes face (see page 11) and whether any of them might be reflected in the wireframe
• The federal, state, and local regulatory landscape and any regulatory factors that will impact the direction of a potential research program
• Whether the problem or technology already receives significant investment from other sources (if there is significant investment from venture capital, private equity, or elsewhere, then it would not be an area of interest for ARPA-I)
• Adjacent areas of work that might inform or affect a potential research program
• The transportation infrastructure sector’s unique challenges and landscape
• How long will it take?
• Existing grant programs and opportunities that might achieve similar goals

Wireframes are intended to be a summary communicative of a larger plan to follow. After further iteration and exploration of the factors outlined above, what was first just a raw program wireframe should develop into more detailed documents. These should include an incisive diagnosis of the problem and evidence and citations validating opportunities to solve it. Together, these components should lead to a plausible program objective as an outcome.

Conclusion

The newly authorized and appropriated ARPA-I presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to apply a model that has been proven successful in developing breakthrough innovations in other sectors to the persistent challenges facing transportation infrastructure.

Individuals and organizations that would work within the ARPA-I network need to have a clear understanding of the unique circumstances, challenges, and opportunities of this sector, as well as how to apply this context and the unique ARPA program ideation model to build high-impact future innovation programs. This community’s engagement is critical to ARPA-I’s success, and the FAS is looking for big thinkers who are willing to take on this challenge by developing bold, innovative ideas.

To sign up for future updates on events, convenings, and other opportunities for you to work in support of ARPA-I programs and partners, click here.

To submit an advanced research program idea, click here.

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Advanced Research at DOT

We’re scoping ambitious ideas to help ARPA-I begin executing projects that improve transportation across the country.

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America’s infrastructure is in disrepair and our transportation system has failed to keep pace with usage, technology and maintenance needs. As a result, 43% of public roadways are in poor or mediocre condition, roadway fatalities reached nearly 43,000 last year, and logistics and supply chain systems are ill-prepared for the increasing stresses caused by pandemics, international conflicts, and extreme weather events. In addition, our nation’s water supply system is plagued by aged infrastructure such as lead pipes that contribute to irreversible health effects, and vulnerable pipelines leading to water main breaks that lose up to 6 billion gallons of treated water daily. These conditions stem from declining public infrastructure investment, which has decreased as a share of GDP by more than 40% from its high in 1961.

The 118th Congress has an historic opportunity to develop and harness innovative technologies and methods to strengthen our economy, spur job growth, and bolster physical security with an eye toward equitable outcomes for all Americans. Our recommendations for policies that can help us achieve these outcomes are detailed below.

Reducing Transportation and Infrastructure GHGs. Commercial trucks and buses are one of the top contributors of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs). To help these vehicles transition to cleaner power sources, Congress should facilitate the build-out of a nationwide network of zero-emission fueling stations that would not only help reduce GHGs but also support America’s emerging alternative fuels and vehicles industry, and the job growth that would come with it.

Another significant contributor to GHGs is air travel, specifically small aircraft, the largest source of environmental lead pollution in the United States. Congress should help bolster a more sustainable aviation industry through funding, regulations, and taxes to spur the electrification of regional airports while putting the U.S. back on track to competing with European and Asian companies in the sustainable aviation technology market.

But reducing greenhouse gas emissions of different travel modes is not enough: we need to revolutionize the way we build, in light of the emissions intensity of materials such as steel and concrete. To support a “Steel Shot” at DOE, Congress should provide funding for a Clean Energy Manufacturing USA Institute focused on clean steel, as well as funding and authorities for federal investment in commercial-scale solutions.

Harnessing the Benefits of Smart-City Technologies While Mitigating Risks. Smart-city technologies – such as autonomous vehicles, smart grids, and internet-connected sensors – have the opportunity to deliver a better quality of life for communities by harnessing the power of data and digital infrastructure. However, they are not being used to their full potential. Congress should support more widespread adoption of smart-city technologies through funding for a new Smart Community Prize Competition, increased funding for community development programs such as HUD’s ConnectHome pilot program, planning grants, and resources for regional innovation ecosystems, amongst others.

But communities should not invest in or adopt smart-city technologies without consideration for individual protections and privacy. To that end, Congress should fund the development of technologies and processes that have civic protections embedded at their core. 

Putting AVs and CVs at the Forefront of Advancing Societal Benefits and Equity. The widespread adoption of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and Connected Vehicles (CVs) can revolutionize the way we travel and accelerate progress on a number of outcomes, including safety, GHG emissions, and travel times and costs. There are several ways Congress can play a role in spurring the AV and CV markets toward realizing these outcomes.

On AVs, Congress can create an Evaluation Innovation Engine at the Department of Transportation (USDOT) funded at $72 million annually to identify priority AV metrics and spur innovative technologies and strategies that would achieve them. Congress can also support AV-5G connections, critical for AV integration with the built environment, by funding a program to establish transportation infrastructure pilot zones; funding a National Connected AV Research Consortium; funding a research initiative at NSF focused on safety; and funding a new U.S. Corps of Engineers and Computer Scientists for Technology. 

On CVs, Congress can help stakeholders at the federal, state, and local level realize their benefits and work towards a common strategy by creating a National Task Force on Connected Vehicles.

Supporting Communities of Opportunity. In support of a national equitable transit-oriented development (TOD) program that addresses widespread demand for affordable housing and walkable communities, Congress should pass legislation that extends the use of Railroad Rehabilitation Improvement Financing (RRIF) funds for TOD initiatives; increases RRIF’s loan authorization to $50B, creates new funding and tax incentives to support TOD initiatives; and expands USDOT’s federal credit assistance programs, among other measures.

Appropriations Recommendations

• ARPA-Infrastructure (ARPA-I). ARPA-I, authorized in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, presents a generational opportunity for USDOT to think big and take on monumental challenges across transportation and infrastructure that are ripe for breakthrough innovation. The office has received funding for initial planning and staffing but still requires considerable appropriations to begin building out an initial set of programs around high-priority infrastructure problems. Our recommendation is $500 million in appropriated funds for FY 2024 to scale ARPA-I.
• Secretary of Transportation Open Research Initiative Pilot Program. We recommend that the authorized pilot programs in Section 25013 of the IIJA be appropriated $50 million in funding for FY 2024, as authorized, to spur advanced transportation research.
• Clean Energy Manufacturing Institute for Clean Steel. We recommend that Congress appropriate $15 million in FY 2024 (a similar funding magnitude as existing institutes) for a Clean Energy Manufacturing Institute focused specifically on clean steel.
• Clean Steel and Aluminum Earthshot Appropriations. The budget request for FY 2023 included $204 million for the Department of Energy’s Energy Earthshots Initiative. We recommend this program receive robust continued appropriations in FY 2024, including $15 million to include an earthshot for clean steel and aluminum.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has identified several domains in the transportation and infrastructure space that retain a plethora of unsolved opportunities ripe for breakthrough innovation.

Transportation is not traditionally viewed as a research- and development-led field, with less than 0.7% of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) annual budget dedicated to R&D activities. The majority of DOT’s R&D funds are disbursed by modal operating administrators mandated to execute on distinct funding priorities rather than a collective, integrated vision of transforming the nation’s infrastructure across 50 states and localities. 

Historically, a small percentage of these R&D funds have supported and developed promising, cross-cutting initiatives, such as the Federal Highway Administration’s Exploratory Advanced Research programs deploying artificial intelligence to better understand driver behavior and applying novel data integration techniques to enhance freight logistics. Yet, the scope of these programs has not been designed to scale discoveries into broad deployment, limiting the impact of innovation and technology in transforming transportation and infrastructure in the United States. 

As a result, transportation and infrastructure retain a plethora of unaddressed opportunities – from reducing the 40,000 annual vehicle-related fatalities, to improving freight logistics through ports, highways, and rail, to achieving a net zero carbon transportation system, to building infrastructure resilient to the impacts of climate change and severe weather. The reasons for these persistent challenges are numerous: low levels of federal R&D spending, fragmentation across state and local government, risk-averse procurement practices, sluggish commercial markets, and more. When innovations do emerge in this field, they suffer from two valleys of death: one to bring new ideas out of the lab into commercialization, and the second to bring successful deployments of those technologies to scale.

The United States needs a concerted national innovation pipeline designed to fill this gap, exploring early-stage, moonshot research while nurturing  breakthroughs from concept to deployment. An Advanced Research Projects Agency-Infrastructure would deliver on this mission. Modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Infrastructure (ARPA-I) will operate nimbly and with rigorous program management and deep technical expertise to tackle the biggest infrastructure  challenges and overcome entrenched market failures. Solutions would cut across traditional transportation modes (e.g. highways, rail, aviation, maritime, pipelines etc) and would include innovative new infrastructure technologies, materials, systems, capabilities, or processes. 

The list of domain areas below reflects priorities for DOT as well as areas where there is significant opportunity for breakthrough innovation:

Key Domain Areas

Metropolitan Safety

Despite progress made since 1975, dramatic reductions in roadway fatalities remain a core, persistent challenge. In 2021, an estimated 42,915 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes, with an estimated 31,785 people killed in the first nine months of 2022. The magnitude of this challenge is articulated in DOT’s most recent National Roadway Safety Strategy, a document that begins with a statement from Secretary Buttigieg: “The status quo is unacceptable, and it is preventable… Zero is the only acceptable number of deaths and serious injuries on our roadways.” 

Example topical areas include but are not limited to: urban roadway safety; advanced vehicle driver assistance systems; driver alcohol detection systems; vehicle design; street design; speeding and speed limits; and V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communications and networking technology.

Key Questions for Consideration:

• What steps can be taken to create safer urban mobility spaces for everyone, and what role can technology play in helping create the future we envision?
• What capabilities, systems, and datasets are we missing right now that would unlock more targeted safety interventions? 

Rural Safety

Rural communities possess their own unique safety challenges stemming from road design and signage, speed limits, and other factors; and data from the Federal Highway Administration shows that “while only 19% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas, 43% of all roadway fatalities occur on rural roads, and the fatality rate on rural roads is almost 2 times higher than on urban roads.”

Example topical areas include but are not limited to: improved information collection and management systems; design and evaluation tools for two-lane highways and other geometric design decisions; augmented visibility; mitigating or anti-rollover crash solutions; and enhanced emergency response. 

Key Questions for Consideration:

• How can rural-based safety solutions address the resource and implementation issues that are faced by local transportation agencies?
• How can existing innovations be leveraged to support the advancement of road safety in rural settings?

Resilient & Climate Prepared Infrastructure

Modern roads, bridges, and transportation are designed to withstand storms that, at the time of their construction, had a probability of occurring once in 100 years; today, climate change has made extreme weather events commonplace. In 2020 alone, the U.S. suffered 22 high-impact weather disasters that each cost over $1 billion in damages. When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City and New Jersey subways with a 14-foot storm surge, millions were left without their primary mode of transportation for a week. Meanwhile, rising sea levels are likely to impact both marine and air transportation, as 13 of the 47 largest U.S. airports have at least one runway within 12 feet of the current sea level. Additionally, the persistent presence of wildfires–which are burning an average of 7 million acres annually across the United States, more than double the average in the 1990s–dramatically reshapes the transportation network in acute ways and causes downstream damage through landslides, flooding, and other natural events.

These trends are likely to continue as climate change exacerbates the intensity and scope of these events. The Department of Transportation is well-positioned to introduce systems-level improvements to the resilience of our nation’s infrastructure.

Example topical areas include but are not limited to: High-performance long-life, advanced materials that increase resiliency and reduce maintenance and reconstruction needs, especially materials for roads, rail, and ports; nature-based protective strategies such as constructed marshes; novel designs for multi-modal hubs or other logistics/supply chain redundancy; efficient and dynamic mechanisms to optimize the relocation of transportation assets; intensive maintenance, preservation, prediction, and degradation analysis methods; and intelligent disaster-resilient infrastructure countermeasures. 

Key Questions for Consideration:

• How can we ensure that innovations in this domain yield processes and technologies that are flexible and adaptive enough to ward against future uncertainties related to climate-related disasters?
• How can we factor in the different climate resilience needs of both urban and rural communities?

Digital Infrastructure

Advancing the systems, tools, and capabilities for digital infrastructure to reflect and manage the built environment has the power to enable improved asset maintenance and operations across all levels of government, at scale. Advancements in this field would make using our infrastructure more seamless for transit, freight, pedestrians, and more. Increased data collection from or about vehicle movements, for example, enables user-friendly and demand-responsive traffic management, dynamic curb management for personal vehicles, transit and delivery transportation modes, congestion pricing, safety mapping and targeted interventions, and rail and port logistics. When data is accessible by local departments of transportation and municipalities, it can be harnessed to improve transportation operations and public safety through crash detection as well as to develop Smart Cities and Communities that utilize user-focused mobility services; connected and automated vehicles; electrification across transportation modes, and intelligent, sensor-based infrastructure to measure and manage age-old problems like potholes, air pollution, traffic, parking, and safety.

Example topical areas include but are not limited to: traffic management; curb management; congestion pricing; accessibility; mapping for safety; rail management; port logistics; and transportation system/electric grid coordination.

Key Questions for Consideration:

• How might we leverage data and data systems to radically improve mobility and our transportation system across all modes?

Expediting and Upgrading Construction Methods

Infrastructure projects are fraught with expensive delays and overrun budgets. In the United States, fewer than 1 in 3 contractors report finishing projects on time and within budgets, with 70% citing coordination at the site of construction as the primary reason. In the words of one industry executive, “all [of the nation’s] major projects have cost and schedule issues … the truth is these are very high-risk and difficult projects. Conditions change. It is impossible to estimate it accurately.” But can process improvements and other innovations make construction cheaper, better, faster, and easier?

Example topical areas include but are not limited to: augmented forecasting and modeling techniques; prefabricated or advanced robotic fabrication, modular, and adaptable structures and systems such as bridge sub- and superstructures; real-time quality control and assurance technologies for accelerated construction, materials innovation; new pavement technologies; bioretention; tunneling; underground infrastructure mapping; novel methods for bridge engineering, building information modeling (BIM), coastal, wind, and offshore engineering; stormwater systems; and computational methods in structural engineering, structural sensing, control, and asset management. 

Key Questions for Consideration:

• What innovations are more critical to the accelerated construction requirements of the future? 

Logistics

Our national economic strength and quality of life depend on the safe and efficient movement of goods throughout our nation’s borders and beyond. Logistic systems—the interconnected webs of businesses, workers, infrastructure processes, and practices that underlie the sorting, transportation, and distribution of goods must operate with efficiency and resilience. . When logistics systems are disrupted by events such as public health crises, extreme weather, workforce challenges, or cyberattacks, goods are delayed, costs increase, and Americans’ daily lives are affected. The Biden Administration issued Executive Order 14017 calling for a review of the transportation and logistics industrial base. DOT released the Freight and Logistics Supply Chain Assessment in February 2022, spotlighting a range of actions that DOT envisions to support a resilient 21st-century freight and logistics supply chain for America.

Topical areas include but are not limited to: freight infrastructure, including ports, roads, airports, and railroads; data and research; rules and regulations; coordination across public and private sectors; and supply chain electrification and intersections with resilient infrastructure. 

Key Questions for Consideration:

• How might we design and develop freight infrastructure to maximize efficiency and use of emerging technologies?
• What existing innovations and technologies could be introduced and scaled up at ports to increase the processing of goods and dramatically lower the transaction costs of US freight?
• How can we design systems that optimize for both efficiency and resilience?
• How can we reduce the negative externalities associated with our logistics systems, including congestion, air pollution, noise, GHG emissions, and infrastructure degradation?

FAS is seeking to engage experts from across the transportation infrastructure community who are the right kind of big thinkers to get involved in developing solutions to transportation moonshots.

Widespread engagement of this diverse network is critical to ensuring ARPA-I’s success. So whether you are an academic researcher, startup CEO, safe streets activist, or have experience with federal R&D programs–we are looking for your insights and expertise.

To be considered for opportunities to support future efforts around transportation infrastructure moonshots, please fill out this form and a member of our team will be in touch as opportunities to get involved arise.

Do you have ideas that could inform an ambitious Advanced Research Projects Agency-Infrastructure (ARPA-I) portfolio at the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)? We’re looking for your boldest infrastructure moonshots.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is seeking to engage experts across the transportation policy space who can leverage their expertise to help FAS identify a set of grand solutions around transportation infrastructure challenges and advanced research priorities for DOT to consider. Priority topic areas include but are not limited to metropolitan safety, rural safety, resilient and climate-prepared infrastructure, digital infrastructure, expediting “mega projects,” and logistics. You can read more about these topic areas in depth here.

What We’re Looking For and How to Submit

We are looking for experts to develop and submit an initial program design in the form of a wireframe that could inform a future advanced research portfolio at DOT. A wireframe is an outline of a potential program that captures key components that need to be considered in order to assess the program’s fit and potential impact. The template below reflects the components of a program wireframe. Wireframes can be submitted by email here. Please include all four sections of the wireframe shown in the template below in the body of your email submission.

Program Design Wireframe

When writing your wireframe, we ask you aim to avoid the following common challenges to ensure that ideas are properly scoped, appropriately ambitious, and are in line with the agency’s goals:

• No clear diagnosis of the problem: Many challenges facing our transportation infrastructure are not defined by a single problem; rather, they are an ecosystem of issues that simultaneously need addressing. An effective program will not only isolate a single “problem” to tackle, but it will approach it at a level where something can actually be done to solve it through root cause analysis.
• Thinking small and narrow: On the other hand, problems being considered for advanced research programs can be isolated down to the point that solving them will not drive transformational change. In this situation, narrow problems would not cater to a series of progressive and complimentary projects that would fit an ARPA.
• Incorrect framing of opportunities: When doing early-stage program design, opportunities are sometimes framed as “an opportunity to tackle a problem.” Rather, an opportunity should reflect a promising method, technology, or approach that is already in existence but would benefit from funding and resources through an advanced research agency program.
• Approaching solutions solely from a regulatory or policy angle: While regulations and policy changes are a necessary and important component of tackling challenges in transportation infrastructure, approaching issues through this lens is not the mandate of an ARPA. ARPAs focus on supporting breakthrough innovations across methods, technologies, and approaches. Additionally, regulatory approaches to problem solving can often be subject to lengthy policy processes.
• No explicit ARPA role: An ARPA should pursue opportunities to solve problems where, without its intervention, breakthroughs may not happen within a reasonable timeframe. If solving a problem already has significant interest from the private or public sector, and they are well on their way to developing a transformational solution in a few years time, then ARPA funding and support might provide a higher value-add elsewhere.
• Lack of throughline: The problems identified for ARPA program consideration should be present as themes throughout the opportunities chosen to solve them as well as how programs are ultimately structured–otherwise, a program may lack a targeted approach to solving a particular challenge.
• Forgetting about end-users: Human-centered design should be at the heart of how ARPA programs are scoped, especially when thinking about the scale at which designers need to think about how solving a problem will provide transformational change for everyday users of transportation infrastructure.
• Being solutions-oriented: Research programs should not be built with pre-determined solutions already in mind; they should be oriented around a specific problem in order to ensure that any solutions put forward are targeted and effective.

For a more detailed primer on ARPA program ideation, please read our publication, “Applying ARPA-I: A Proven Model for Transportation.”

Sample Idea

Informed by input from non-federal subject matter experts

Problem

Urban and suburban environments are complex, with competing uses for public space across modes and functions – drivers, transit users, cyclists, pedestrians, diners, etc.    Humans are prone to erratic, unpredictable, and distracted driving behavior, and when coupled with speed, vehicle size, and infrastructure design, such behaviors can cause injury, death, property damage, and transportation system disruption. A decade-old study from NHTSA – at a time when roadway fatalities were approximately 25% lower than current levels – found that the total value of societal harm from crashes in 2010 was $836 billion. 

Opportunity

What if the relationships between the driver, the environment (including pedestrians), and the vehicle could be personalized?

• Driver-to-Vehicle: Using novel data gathered from cars’ sensors, driver smartphones, and other collectible data, design a feedback loop that customizes Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to unique driving behavior signatures.
• Vehicle-to-Environment: Using V2I/V2X and geofencing technologies to govern and harmonize speed and lane operations that optimize max speeds for safety in unique street contexts.
• Driver-to-Environment: Blending both D2V and V2E technologies, develop integrated awareness of the surrounding environment that alerts drivers of potential risks in parked (e.g., car door opening to a bike lane) and moving states (e.g., approaching car).

Program Objective 

• Driver-to-Vehicle: (1) Identify the totality of usable driver data within the vehicular environment, from car sensors to phone usage; (2) develop a series of driver profiles that will build the foundation for human-centered, personalized ADAS that can both intervene in an emergency and nudge behavior change through informational updates, intuitive behavioral feedback, or modifying vehicle operations (e.g., acceleration); (3) develop dynamic, intelligent ADAS systems that customize to driver signatures based on preset profiles and experiential, local training of the algorithm; (4) establish this as a proof of concept for a novel, personalized ADAS and architect a grand-challenge for industry to improve upon this personalized, human-centered ADAS with key target metrics; (5) create a regulatory framework mandating Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to include a baseline level of ADAS, given the results of the grand challenge.
• Vehicle-to-Environment: (1) Design the universal mobile application or geofence trigger that will contour virtual boundaries for a set of diverse, transferrable streets (e.g., school zones) and characteristics (e.g., bike lanes); (2) engage OEMs to design and integrate the geofence triggers with the human-centered ADAS and/or another vehicle-based receiver within a test fleet of different car types to modify vehicle responses to the geofence criteria as outlined by the pilot cities; (3) broker partnerships with 10 cities to identify a menu of geofence criteria, pilot the use of them, and establish a mechanism to measure before-and-after outcomes and comparisons from neighboring regions;
• Driver-to-Environment: integrate ADAS with the geofence trigger to develop an advanced and dynamic situational awareness environment for drivers that is customized to their profile and based on built environment conditions such as bike lanes and school zones, as well as weather, high traffic, and time of day.

Future 

Digital transportation networks can communicate personalized information with drivers through their cars in a uniform medium and with a goal of augmenting safety in each of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.

On December 8th, 2022, the U.S. Department of Transportation hosted a workshop, “Transportation, Mobility, and the Future of Infrastructure,” in collaboration with the Federation of American Scientists. 

The goal for this event was to bring together innovative thinkers from various sectors of infrastructure and transportation to scope ideas where research, technology, and innovation could drive meaningful change for the Department of Transportation’s strategic priorities.

To provide framing for the day, participants heard from Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology Robert Hampshire, who both underscored the potential for a new agency – The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Infrastructure (ARPA-I) to accelerate transformative solutions for the transportation sector. Then, a panel featuring Kei Koizumi, Jennifer Gerbi, and Erwin Gianchandani focused on Federal Research and Development (R&D) explored federal advanced research models that drive innovation in complex sectors and explored how such approaches may accelerate solutions to key priorities in the transportation system.

Workshop participants listening to remarks from U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Participants then participated in separate breakout sessions organized around: 1) safety; 2) digitalization; and 3) climate and resilience. During the breakouts sessions, participants were asked to build on pre-work they had completed before the Workshop by brainstorming future vision statements and using them as the foundation to come up with innovative federal R&D program designs. Participants then regrouped and ended the day by discussing the most promising ideas from their respective breakout sessions, and where their ideas could go next.

The Workshop inspired participants to dig deep to surface meaningful challenges and innovative solutions for USDOT to tackle, whether through ARPA-I or other federal R&D mechanisms, and represents an initial step of a broader process to identify topics and domains in which stakeholders can drive transformational progress for our infrastructure and transportation system. Such an effort will require continued engagement and buy-in from a diverse community of experts.

As such, FAS is seeking to engage experts from across the transportation infrastructure community who are willing to “think big” and creatively about solutions to transportation moonshots. If you’re interested in supporting future efforts around transportation infrastructure moonshots, please visit our “Get Involved” page; if you’re ready to submit an initial program design in the form of a wireframe that could inform a future advanced research portfolio at DOT, please visit our “Share an Idea” page.

Background and Purpose

On July 26, 2022, MIT Mobility Initiative, MIT Washington Office, and The Engine hosted a workshop with leaders from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and infrastructure stakeholders — industry veterans, startup founders, federal, state and local policymakers and regulators, academics and investors.

The purpose of this convening was to engage a broad, diverse set of stakeholders in a series of ideation exercises to imagine what a set of ambitious advanced research programs could focus on to remake the future of American infrastructure. This read-out builds on a partnership FAS and the Day One Project have with the Department of Transportation to support solutions-based research and development. You can learn more about our work here.

The workshop consisted of two sessions. In the first working session, attendees discussed key challenges in infrastructure and possible research priority areas for ARPA-I. In the second half of the first session, participants were asked to come up with priority program areas that ARPA-I could focus on

During the second working session, participants considered the barriers that prevent the translation of breakthrough science and engineering into infrastructure reality, and opportunities for ARPA-I to smooth some of those frictions as an institution.

Resulting Recommendations

While some of the recommendations below may ultimately fall outside of ARPA-I’s mandate, or may require further Congressional authorization, they emphasize the need for ARPA-I to be strategically coordinating future deployment at scale even at the earliest stages of a project.

Deploying capital strategically

• Use existing or new authorities, such as consortium Other Transactions Authority, prize challenges, and public-private capital matching to ensure maximum flexibility and capital availability to fund complex, capital-intensive infrastructure investments. 
• Create an Office of Scale-up within ARPA-I to ensure coordination across all “valleys of death” from early-stage basic research to full scale deployment. Mechanisms can range from early-stage open seed topics to later-stage Scale-up and deployment loan contracting mechanisms. 

Establishing development and test infrastructure:

• The costs of infrastructure testbeds are prohibitive for most innovators. Creating government-sponsored testbeds, with participation from standards and regulatory bodies, would decrease the need for private capital and could create early linkages between innovators and those in charge of deployment. Existing national labs may have relevant expertise and equipment. Opening up access to these facilities through consortia, lighter weight Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), or other low-friction mechanisms may also have similar effects.

Catalyzing stakeholder collaboration:

• For early-stage researchers, create a community to share, discuss, and reflect upon the innovative landscape of infrastructure projects. To help reduce later-stage friction, create an Office of Strategic Engagement that would report to the ARPA-I director. This office would coordinate ARPA-I investment areas with external stakeholders, including academia, corporate partners, regulatory bodies, and, perhaps, even local community deployment advocacy.