what is infrastructure 
infrastructure is defined as the basic physical systems of a business region or nation and often involves the production of public goods or production processes examples of infrastructure include transportation systems communication networks sewage water and school systems 1investments in infrastructure tend to be costly and capital intensive but vital to a region s economic development and prosperity projects related to infrastructure improvements may be funded publicly privately or through public private partnerships investopedia sydney burnsunderstanding infrastructurethe term infrastructure first appeared in the late 1880s derived from french with infra meaning below and structure meaning building 2 infrastructure can mean the foundation upon which the structure of an economy is built infrastructure includes a variety of systems and structures where physical components are required such as the electrical grid across a city state or country while the facilities equipment or similar physical assets like bridges and roads are essential to an economy infrastructure also enables citizens to participate in the social and economic community and provides them with necessities such as food and water because infrastructure often involves the production of either public goods or goods that lend themselves to production it is typical to see public financing control supervision or regulation of infrastructure this usually takes the form of direct government production or production by a closely regulated legally sanctioned entity the first federally funded infrastructure project was the cape henry lighthouse built in 1792 at virginia beach virginia 3sometimes private companies choose to invest in a country s infrastructure development as part of a business expansion effort for example an energy company may build pipelines and railways in a country where it wants to refine petroleum and this investment can benefit both the company and the country individuals may also choose to fund improvements to certain pieces of public infrastructure for example an individual may fund improvements to hospitals schools or local law enforcement efforts types of infrastructureinfrastructure is often categorized as hard or soft hard infrastructure is the tangible physical assembly of structures such as roads bridges tunnels and railways soft infrastructure is the services required to maintain the economic health and social needs of a population hard infrastructure is the physical system needed to run a modern industrialized nation examples include roads highways and bridges as well as the assets required to make them operational such as transit buses vehicles and oil refineries technical systems such as networking equipment and cabling are considered hard infrastructure and provide a critical function to support business operations according to the brookings institution 16 6 million people have jobs in fields directly related to infrastructure from locomotive engineers and electrical power line installers to truck drivers and construction laborers infrastructure jobs account for nearly 11 8 of the nation s workforce 4soft infrastructure represents human capital and institutions necessary to maintain an economy that delivers certain services to the population such as healthcare financial institutions government offices law enforcement and education investments in soft infrastructure target how people thrive and participate in daily life in 2021 president biden s build back better plan targeted soft infrastructure proposals like expansions to medicare and tuition free community college 5maintaining infrastructure