360 Lecture Bridget Rosewell

The Department of Economics is pleased to annouce that Bridget Rosewell CBE will be delivering the third talk as part of the 360 Guest Lecture Series 2019/20.

Planning Our Infrastructure - Dealing with Long Term Uncertainty
Monday 11 February 2019, 6-7pm
OC0.03, Oculus, University of Warwick

About the talk

Infrastructure lasts a long time. Water pipes can be nearly 200 years old, and the first railway system is a product of the mid-nineteenth century. Investments that we make now need either to have built-in obsolescence so we plan for their redundancy or we need to think long term about their use.

Moreover, people respond to infrastructure investments by changing their own decisions about where to work, to live or to invest. Their health and well-being will be affected. So it is both important and difficult to plan infrastructure, to build appropriate models and modelling strategies, and to identify suitable data. The long term future is inherently unknowable, so are all plans worthless?

This lecture will describe how the National Infrastructure Commission has approached this challenge and the kind of decision tools and analysis that has been brought to bear in recommending transport investments, focusing on renewable energy, electric vehicles and extending bandwidth.

About the speaker - Bridget Rosewell CBE

Bridget Rosewell is an experienced director, policy maker and economist, with a track record in advising public and private sector clients on key strategic issues. She is a Commissioner for the National Infrastructure Commission, Chair of Atom Bank and the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, a non-executive director of Network Rail and a founder and Senior Adviser of Volterra Partners. She was Chief Economic Adviser to the Greater London Authority from 2002 to 2012, responsible for all transport and economic impact analysis. Her book, ‘Reinventing London’ was published in 2014.

She was appointed CBE in December 2018 and is also a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Academy of Social Science and the Society of Professional Economists. She writes on infrastructure, modelling validation and risk and uncertainty.

She has worked extensively on cities, infrastructure and finance, advising on projects in road and rail and on major property developments and regeneration. She has given expert evidence in many planning inquiries and has just chaired a review of the operation of these inquiries for MHCLG. She has been a member of a number of Commissions looking at the future of public services, local government finance and city and regional economies.

Please note that photography and video recording will be taking place during the event.

Registration