Participation in the Infrastructure Report 2021
Otfried Knoll participated in the report as a writer and as member of the Research Committee
The Austrian Federal Ministry of Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology presented the Infrastructure Report 2021 online.
Otfried Knoll, Head of the St. Pölten UAS‘ Department of Rail Technology and Mobility, is a member of the report’s research advisory committee. He has also written the chapter “Infrastruktur braucht Bildung“ (Infrastructure Requires Education), which he introduced at the presentation.
Education as a Key Resource
“The scope of the dynamics that forced decision-makers to act during the COVID-19 crisis was unthought of prior to said crisis. In a race against time, new ways of working were developed and adopted unbelievably fast. The digitalisation of previously analogue processes that had to be implemented practically overnight demonstrated that new ways of work may also contribute to an energy and resource optimisation if managed, controlled and introduced correctly“, writes Knoll in his chapter.
More than 200 decision-makers from the industry were interviewed for the infrastructure report. 84 percent of them name education as a decisive requirement for the competitiveness of a location.
“A highly developed economy has to focus on taking on the challenges of all current crises – above all, climate change and the resulting political conflicts to be expected outside Austria – and work on strategic development plans to accompany these crises. In addition to an infrastructure with optimised resilience, education, training and sociopolitical incentives for lifelong learning are certainly irreplaceable components of these plans“, argues Knoll in his chapter.
On the Austrian Infrastructure Report 2021
For the Austrian Infrastructure Report, 240 managers of Austrian companies with more than 100 employees participated in an evaluation through a questionnaire. The areas energy and energy transition, transport (roads, the rail sector, aviation and shipping) and digital infrastructure (IT, broadband and 5G) were evaluated. The quantitative study was made complete through 100 qualitative interviews with leading personalities from politics and administration.
The report coordinator, David Ungar-Klein, is a lecturer at the Department of Rail Technology and Mobility.