ABSTRACT
Although most applications of information technology (IT) to infrastructure systems are being developed and deployed in developed countries, it is possible that in the near future the greatest need will be for their use in developing countries. Current population growth and urbanization rates indicate that in the Twenty-First Century most people will live in what are currently known as developing countries and that the majority of the world’s large urban areas will also be located in developing countries. Many of these rapidly growing urban areas already face important deficits in the provision of infrastructure systems such as access to clean water and wastewater treatment, electricity and transportation and these defecits will increase in the coming years. This chapter presents data that demonstrate enormous disparities in access to infrastructure services around the world and examines how IT can help meet some of the infrastructure needs in developing countries. The infrastructure sectors considered include water and wastewater treatment, transportation, energy and electricity, and telecommunications and information technology. For the purposes of this chapter, developing countries are defined as low-and middle-income countries. The World Bank (2001: 271) defines these countries as having a Gross National Product (GNP) per capita of US$9,266 or less.
