Infrastructure that works.
For everyone.
The Intelligent Infrastructure Institute (I3), is a nonpartisan organization focused on how infrastructure systems are built, how they operate in the real world, how they should function — and how we can strengthen and reform them over time.
About usAn organization, built with intention
I3 aims to understand how infrastructure systems perform, what it takes for them to work well over time, and how they can improve.
We are taking a deliberate approach — defining how we do the work, how we build knowledge, and how we engage others — so we create an organization, a movement, a model, that is useful, credible, and built to last.
We are starting with energy infrastructure in California.
Why the work mattersInfrastructure is what holds everything else up.
When infrastructure fails, rights fail.
Sometimes it fails all at once: fires, blackouts, contaminated water. And sometimes it fails quietly: rising costs, unreliable service, systems that degrade where people have the fewest options.
Most people experience both, just not in the same way.
When failure is immediate, the impact is visible. When it is gradual, it accumulates, shaping what people can access, afford, and rely on.
That’s where rights begin to break down.
Infrastructure is what makes those rights real — or not. These systems are connected. When they fail, they fail together. That’s why this work matters.
Infrastructure as we see it
Beyond roads and bridges - it’s the systems that make daily life possible.
How we approach the work
The ideas that guide how we understand infrastructure, and how we engage with it.
Clarity matters
People notice infrastructure when something breaks; the power goes out, the water isn’t safe, a bill spikes. Even when it is working, it’s often hard to comprehend why. Everyone should be able to understand the systems they rely on.
Shared understanding
People disagree, work and talk over and past each other because they’re operating from different experience, data, incentives, and constraints. Shared understanding has to be built by putting the same information on the table and making tradeoffs visible.
Nonpartisan
Infrastructure affects everyone, regardless of politics. The same systems serve entire communities — and performance isn’t partisan. Strong and poor decisions come from all sides, so we focus on what works and stay open to good ideas, wherever they come from.
Build to outlast us
Some infrastructure still works decades later, and some doesn’t. These systems outlast the people who design them. They should be built for the generations who rely on them long after we’re gone, and treated with that level of responsibility from the start.
Look at systems, not just moments
When something isn’t working, the instinct is to fix what’s visible: a delay, a cost, a failure. But when the problems persist, the answer is in how the system was built and changed over time — by decisions, tradeoffs, and small failures that compound.
Bold ideas, built in reality
We’re ambitious about how infrastructure can change, and clear-eyed about what it takes to make that change real. These systems operate within real constraints, and meaningful change has to work through them — and push them where needed — to work in reality.
This work is just beginning.
We are in the early stages of building the Institute and shaping this work. If you’re interested in how infrastructure systems perform, and how that understanding evolves.
We invite you to follow along.