Out of service

摘要

The trappings of our civilization, from flushing the toilet to posting flip comments on Twitter, rely on a set of critical infrastructures. Many of these-water systems, transport links, electricity grids and generating plants-are ageing severely in developed countries. And the ones that aren't ageing, such as mobile communications and the Internet, are of unknown resilience.rnThe sudden collapse of a bridge on Interstate 35 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 1 August 2007, like the cascade power failure that swept the northeastern United States four years earlier, was a portent of what could come to European and Asian nations if they allow their physical infrastructure to deteriorate.