SINCE a power outage caused a three-hour suspension of trading at the Singapore Exchange on Nov 5, 2014, and flash floods hit Orchard Road after torrential rains in December 2011, there has been increased scrutiny of the reliability of existing infrastructure systems. In recent years, the increased occurrences of train faults have also introduced occasional episodes of inconveniences into the daily commuting lives of Singaporeans.

Of course, other parts of the world, including advanced nations, are not spared the occasional disruption to their infrastructure systems. System disruptions of substantial magnitude were recently observed in the UK in December 2014, when a computer glitch at its national air traffic control centre disrupted hundreds of flights; and in Amsterdam, when a power outage affected trains, trams, traffic, airport operations and hospital operations in March 2015.

Infrastructure is a system of networks that provides energy supply, transportation, communication, banking, finance, emergency and other services, which form the "backbone" of urbanised societies. Particularly for small, well-organised, and prosperous (Swop) and densely populated countries such as Singapore, their well-being and development depends on the reliability of the infrastructure systems.