Presents an innovative taxonomy to clearly differentiate mechanisms, properties, and principles in infrastructure systems, enhancing engineering clarity.
Infrastructure engineering discusses systems and tools, not the underlying parts those systems are built from. The same word commonly names a mechanism, a property, and a principle (durability is a mechanism implemented via journaling and replication; durability is a property claimed about committed data; "durability principles" govern how the mechanisms are configured). This conflation prevents precise comparison and prevents engineering decisions from being inspectable. This paper presents a three-axis taxonomy. Axis 1 enumerates the mechanisms — the building blocks that perform work. Axis 2 enumerates the properties — the contracts that hold over those mechanisms. Axis 3 enumerates the principles — the rules that govern assembly. Each axis is populated; the relationships between axes are specified.
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Geoffrey Howland (2026) studied this question.
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