As Europe’s infrastructure is tested by ageing assets, extreme weather and rising delivery pressure, resilience will depend on what gets built and whether the information behind those assets can move across systems, teams and lifecycles, writes Nathan Marsh, regional executive and SVP, EMEA, Bentley Systems
Europe does not have to imagine what infrastructure stress looks like. In the past two years, it has seen a bridge collapse in Dresden, severe flooding across Central Europe and Valencia, a blackout that left Spain and parts of Portugal without power and four UK heatwaves, just this summer, that disrupted local rail travel.
Each event had different causes, but together they point to a common reality. Infrastructure resilience now depends as much on visibility, maintenance intelligence and timely decision-making as on physical capacity.
Those pressures also extend across asset classes. Water systems, rail networks, roads, airports and power grids increasingly function as one connected system, where a disruption in one area can quickly affect others.
A power outage can stop rail services and airport operations; flooding can damage roads, bridges, substations and water treatment facilities at once; and delays in one transport corridor can ripple through wider economic activity. That interdependence means Europe needs to plan, fund and operate infrastructure as connected networks rather than separate businesses.
At the same time, owners, contractors, engineers and operators are dealing with labour shortages, limited engineering capacity and growing backlogs in maintenance and delivery. That makes the way infrastructure information is created, shared and used more important than ever.
Too often, projects and assets are still managed through fragmented systems, disconnected data and workflows that struggle to carry cleanly from design into construction, operations and maintenance. That approach is increasingly at odds with the practical demands facing Europe’s infrastructure sector.
If the sector wants assets to last longer, projects to move faster and digital tools to deliver real value, the information behind infrastructure has to be usable beyond the team, platform or phase that first created it.
Why resilience starts with usable data
Infrastructure assets are built to last for decades. Across Europe, railways, roads, bridges, tunnels and utility networks routinely stay in service far longer than the software used to design or manage them. The data behind those assets has to remain usable too.
But much of that information has historically been created in proprietary systems and handed over in formats that do not travel well from one stage of the asset lifecycle to the next. Engineers end up checking drawings against spreadsheets, PDFs, models and asset registers that were never designed to speak to each other. By the time information reaches maintenance teams, some of the context has often been lost.
That is more than inefficient. Over time, it weakens maintenance planning, slows response times and makes it harder to protect long-term asset value. Open standards, open-source technologies and open APIs offer a more durable alternative. They help keep critical infrastructure data accessible, usable and easier to transfer across systems, suppliers and project phases.
The value of that approach is already visible on live projects. On the Midland Main Line electrification programme in the UK, SPL
Powerlines UK used a connected data environment and digital twin to coordinate work across 20 design organisations. The significance is not simply that a digital twin was used. It is that multiple teams could work from a clearer shared picture rather than treating coordination as a manual reconciliation exercise.
In a sector under pressure to do more with ageing assets, that kind of continuity matters.
Why connected infrastructure needs connected data
That continuity matters because infrastructure no longer fails, operates or recovers one network at a time. Water systems depend on power. Railways depend on signalling, drainage and reliable energy. Roads and airports depend on resilient power, communications and access routes. A disruption in one place can quickly become a transport, utilities and economic problem somewhere else.
That is why the case for open ecosystems is also a case for a systems approach to infrastructure. Owners and operators need data that can move across asset classes, suppliers and phases, so they can see dependencies earlier and understand how decisions in one part of the network affect another.
Why openness changes how the industry innovates
Resilience is only part of the story. Europe’s infrastructure challenges are too large, too
interconnected and too expensive to solve inside closed technical environments, especially when the networks themselves increasingly depend on one another. Interoerable systems make it easier for owners, engineering consultancies, contractors, developers and technology providers to work from shared information without forcing every partner into the same technology stack.
The next gains in productivity are more likely to come from better coordination across the supply chain than from any single platform or provider acting alone. When data moves more easily, organisations can adopt new tools without rebuilding everything around them.
The culture around infrastructure technology is shifting too. Forums such as NXT BLD and
NXT DEV reflect a growing appetite for shared problem-solving among engineers, developers and industry leaders. The point is larger than the events themselves. The industry is moving away from the idea that any one organisation can solve these problems on its own.
That becomes even more important as infrastructure workflows generate more data and rely more heavily on AI. Firms need room to test tools and integrate new capabilities without creating another layer of digital silos.
AI will only be as useful as the data behind it
AI is already becoming part of how infrastructure is inspected, maintained and delivered. But it has limits. Its usefulness depends on whether the underlying data is accessible, connected and grounded in real engineering context, including the relationships between assets that may sit in different sectors but operate as one wider system.
When information is scattered across systems, AI has less chance of producing reliable results. When data is locked in proprietary formats, it is harder to apply across the asset lifecycle or embed into the workflows engineers and operators use every day.
A good example comes from Italy, where Italferr used an AI-powered digital twin for the Serravalle Tunnel to automate inspections, reduce inspection time, cut field interventions and lower operational risk.
What matters is that AI was treated as part of a structured information model that engineers could use to support real asset management decisions, rather than as a standalone application.
The same logic applies to bridge monitoring, dam inspections, roadway maintenance and other asset-intensive work. AI is most valuable when it supports engineering judgement, adds capacity and helps teams act earlier with better information.
Open data schemas, open-source tools and open APIs can make that easier by allowing new capabilities to be added without breaking what already works. That is how useful digital practice moves beyond isolated pilots and into everyday delivery.
A practical choice for Europe’s infrastructure sector
Resilience, innovation and AI all point back to the same issue. From rail corridors and
tunnels to bridges, utilities, roads, airports and power grids, Europe’s infrastructure sector will get more from digital investment if the information can move with the asset, across the systems it depends on, rather than only with the project.
The alternative is to keep relying on closed systems that limit collaboration, slow handover and make future change harder than it needs to be.
Openness is more than a shortcut around the hard work of governance. Poor data gains little value simply because it is easier to share. Open systems also need procurement models that reward long-term asset value rather than only short-term delivery. Data quality, cybersecurity and accountability still need to be designed in.
Open ecosystems cannot remove those pressures. They can, however, help the sector respond with better information, tighter coordination and digital systems that adapt as conditions change across connected networks.
For owners, operators, consultants and contractors, that is not an abstract case for openness. It is about whether the information created on today’s projects will still be useful when those assets need to be maintained, upgraded or defended against future risk.
That is the challenge now facing the sector: to treat infrastructure data not as a by-product of projects but as an essential material used to build the asset itself.
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