Energy and Infrastructure Management in Post Covid-19 Era

Book excerpt: Covid-19 outbreak has been the biggest health, social and economic emergency the world has ever faced since the Second World War. The pandemic has drastically changed, at least temporarily, the way society, businesses, and infrastructure systems operate. It has forced us to take a closer look at our woefully inadequate health infrastructure. It also led to the closure of educational institutions and turned formal learning into distance learning, posing a daunting challenge of demand for e-learning infrastructure. Social distancing policies (SDPs), encouraging people to stay home and limit gatherings, impacted wide range of services and industries. The telecommunications infrastructure, in particular, became a spotlight in view of its critical importance to keep businesses, governments, and societies connected and running in the period of economic and social disruption. The governments acknowledged a fact that “telecommunications, internet services, broadcasting, cable services, IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS)” are the essential services. Work from Home (WFH) seemed a positive experience, however with some adverse impact on the social, behavioural and physical factors. ICEIM 2022 is a humble contribution of SPM PDEU in terms of presenting a scholarly platform wherein abundance of ideas, answers, right questions, and complementing new learning’s are expected to emerge. The conference aims at discussing and deliberating various contemporary issues and challenge in the management of energy & infrastructure. The conference showcases seven tracks, five of which are Business & Technology, Finance, Human Resource, Marketing, and Project & Operations Management. Then in view of emerging scenario, two more tracks were added namely, Business Analytics and Data Science, Strategies & Entrepreneurship Management. We do expect to receive 80–90 research papers covering various tracks of the conference. We have so far got regular research papers, industry papers, Ph.D. research papers and students’ research articles. New research directions also constitute an agenda of a conference. This conference had three plenary sessions: a) Emerging Electrical Vehicle Ecosystem: Prospects and Impediments, b) Infrastructure Development in India: Policy Perspectives and Innovative Financing Initiatives, c) Energy Sector Management: Challenges and Strategies in Industry 4.0 era. All the plenary sessions of this conference have speakers mostly from the industry. We strongly believe that this International Conference will provide ample opportunities to all participants to disseminate new research ideas with industry professionals as well as the policy-makers. It is also believed that this International Conference will initiate new thought process towards the issues and challenges faced by the energy and infrastructure and will definitely add substantially to the existing domain of knowledge. We are pleased to present this proceeding of the International Conference to the academicians, researchers, industry practitioners and policy-makers who all have joined hands towards building the new knowledge development in the area of energy & infrastructure management.