Infrastructures are undergoing the greatest transformation since the Industrial Revolution. The energy transition, artificial intelligence, digitalization, resilience to climate change, the security of critical infrastructures, and increasing urbanization are redefining the way we plan, finance, and manage the large systems that sustain our societies.
With the aim of fostering international reflection on these challenges, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), the World Bank Group, and the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) have decided to establish the World Infrastructure Forum (WIF), an initiative that aims to become the major international platform for thought, cooperation, and leadership on 21st-century infrastructures, and will hold its first edition on October 28 and 29 in Madrid.
As explained by José Miguel Atienza, director of the Higher Technical School of Civil Engineering at UPM and co-founder of the WIF, Carmen Marín, executive director of the WIF, Ali Jadbabaie, director of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, and Stéphane Straub, chief economist for Infrastructure at the World Bank Group, the future of infrastructures has become one of the major strategic challenges for the economy, sustainability, and global competitiveness.
Investment needs
According to estimates published by McKinsey & Company in The Infrastructure Moment (2025), the world will need to mobilize around 106 trillion dollars in infrastructure investments by 2040 to meet the needs for growth, renewal, and transformation of the main economic systems. Transportation will continue to represent the largest volume of investment, followed by energy, digital infrastructures, and social infrastructures.
Long-term prospects point in the same direction. The report Global Infrastructure Outlook 2025–2050, prepared by PwC and Oxford Economics and published in 2026, estimates that global accumulated investment in infrastructures could reach 151 trillion dollars by 2050, nearly double that recorded during the previous quarter-century. Annual spending would rise from about 4.4 trillion dollars in 2024 to nearly 6.9 trillion in 2050, driven by the modernization of existing infrastructures, the energy transition, digitalization, and urban growth.
José Miguel Atienza emphasizes that infrastructures have ceased to be a specific sector to become the system that sustains the functioning of our societies. “When we talk about infrastructures, we are no longer just talking about roads, bridges, or railways. We are also talking about energy networks, data centers, telecommunications, water infrastructures, ports, airports, or satellites. Moreover, infrastructures have ceased to be a set of relatively independent sectors to become a deeply interconnected system on which economic competitiveness, resilience to climate change, energy security, strategic autonomy, and the well-being of our societies increasingly depend,” he points out.
The director of the School of Civil Engineering at UPM emphasizes that the convergence of challenges such as the energy transition, digitalization, artificial intelligence, climate change, or geopolitical reconfiguration forces us to rethink the way the world conceives its infrastructures. “Infrastructures are undergoing one of the deepest transformations in their history. This transformation goes far beyond technological change. The real challenge is no longer just how much we need to invest, but to answer a much more strategic question: what infrastructures does the world need for the coming decades?”
In this context, he defends the role of universities as spaces for knowledge generation and anticipation capable of connecting research, innovation, business, and institutions to contribute to better decision-making. This position also allows them to act as an intellectually independent forum, capable of bringing together diverse perspectives without being conditioned by immediate commercial, political, or regulatory interests.
The necessary collaboration
According to Ali Jadbabaie, we are at a decisive moment for the future of infrastructures. “We are experiencing a technological transformation of a magnitude comparable —or even greater— to that of the Industrial Revolution, and its course will largely depend on how the race to develop infrastructures evolves over the coming decades.” The great challenges of our time —the energy transition, artificial intelligence, digitalization, climate change, and the resilience of our cities— are profoundly transforming the way the systems that sustain our economies and societies are designed, built, and managed.
“Infrastructures can no longer be understood as a set of isolated assets,” Jadbabaie states. “They constitute a network of complex and interdependent systems whose planning, development, and resilience require a much more integrated approach and an unprecedented level of collaboration across disciplines and sectors.”
However, infrastructures remain a capital-intensive field, with narrow margins and in which transformation processes have traditionally progressed at a slower pace than in other sectors. In this context, no institution, no country, nor any discipline can face a challenge of this magnitude alone. “That is why initiatives like the World Infrastructure Forum are so important,” he concludes. “By bringing together universities, international organizations, businesses, and public officials, they create a space to share knowledge and build a common vision of 21st-century infrastructures. International cooperation and knowledge exchange will be essential to make the decisions that will define the future of our societies.”
For her part, Carmen Marín explains that the WIF was created precisely to respond to that need to build a permanent international conversation about the future of infrastructures. “We are living in a moment where there is more knowledge than ever, but also enormous fragmentation. Universities research, companies innovate, multilateral organizations finance, and governments design public policies, but we need spaces where all that knowledge can meet and turn into better decisions,” she stated.
Independent and non-profit
Marín explains that the World Infrastructure Forum has been conceived as an international, independent, non-profit, and invitation-only platform, created to promote dialogue among governments, multilateral organizations, universities, businesses, investors, and knowledge centers from an open and cross-cutting perspective. She also highlights that the project is driven by internationally recognized institutions, reflecting the Forum’s desire to combine academic excellence, innovation capacity, technical expertise, and a global vision.
As she explains, the ambition of the WIF transcends the organization of an international meeting. “We do not want to simply organize a conference on infrastructures. We want to build an international community capable of generating knowledge, fostering alliances, and contributing to improving the decisions that will define the infrastructures of the future.”
Marín and Atienza highlight the role of Madrid as the headquarters of this international initiative and emphasize that the Spanish capital has established itself as one of the main European centers for business, innovation, and knowledge, with a long tradition and recognized international prestige in the field of civil engineering, in addition to being a natural bridge between Europe, Latin America, and other regions of the world, conditions that make it an ideal place to host a global conversation about the major challenges of infrastructures.
The World Infrastructure Forum aims to become a permanent platform where governments, universities, businesses, multilateral organizations, investors, and international leaders can share knowledge, promote cooperation, and generate proposals that contribute to designing the infrastructures that will enable a more sustainable, resilient, digital, and competitive economy.
For Stephane Straub, chief economist for infrastructure at the World Bank, “infrastructures are one of the main drivers of economic growth, competitiveness, and social development. However, the challenge we face today is not just to mobilize more investment, but to ensure that this investment meets the needs of a world profoundly transformed by the energy transition, digitalization, climate change, and increasing urbanization. Investing better is as important as investing more, and that requires a shared strategic vision and increasingly close cooperation among governments, financial institutions, businesses, and knowledge centers.”
Straub states that “initiatives like the World Infrastructure Forum contribute precisely to building that space for dialogue and international cooperation. Bringing together public officials, multilateral organizations, universities, businesses, and investors to share experiences, identify best practices, and promote innovative solutions is essential to improve the quality of decisions and accelerate the development of more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive infrastructures. In an increasingly complex global context, shared knowledge constitutes a strategic asset for development.”
