Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

AN OVERVIEW OF ENGINEERING3.Manufacturing end-use properties: product design andengineering.4. Application of multi-scale and multi-disciplinary computationalmodeling: for example from the molecular-scale,to the overall complex production scale, to the entire productionsite, and involving process control and safety.With these changes in mind, modern chemical engineering canbe seen as a tool for driving sustainable social and economicdevelopment in the contexts of ‘ society and market demandsversus technology offers’ and the concept of transformingmolecules into money.Clearly, the chemical industries are confronted with a greatnumber of challenges, all within a framework of globalization,competition and sustainability. To satisfy these consumerneeds and market trends, chemical and process engineersmust develop innovative technologies and take a multi-disciplinary,multi-scale and integrated approach. Moreover, theycan use this approach to respond to increasing environmental,societal and economic requirements, and to smooth the transitiontowards sustainability whatever their particular industrymay be.Chemical engineering today drives economic developmentand is fundamental to wealth creation in the framework ofglobalization and sustainability. Engineers must constantlyadapt to new trends, and the education of the next generationof students must arm them with the tools needed for theworld as it will be, and not only as it is today, as well as preparethem for the technology-driven world of the future.4.2.5 Environmental engineeringCheryl Desha and Charlie HargrovesSince the start of the Industrial Revolution engineers havemade significant advances in delivering a range of crucial solutionsand services to the world’s growing communities. However,until the latter part of the twentieth century, engineersgave little consideration to broader environmental impacts,in part due to a lack of scientific understanding of the world’snatural systems and their limited resilience. As scientific knowledgeincreased, the field of environmental science emergedand expertise developed around better understanding of theimpacts of development on the environment. Efforts weremade to incorporate key components of this new knowledgeacross the engineering disciplines. However, the most visibleaction was in developing a new discipline to focus on the interfaceof engineering and environmental issues, in the form of‘environmental engineering’.The emergence of environmental engineeringas a distinct discipline in the USAJames R. MihelcicOver the past several decades, environmental engineering hasemerged as a distinct engineering discipline around the world. Takingjust a few examples from the United States:■ The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)now accredits more than fifty environmental engineering programmes.■■■■abcdEnvironmental engineering has become a recognized specializationon professional engineering licensing exams. aAs of May 2005, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS) b counted over 50,000 environmental engineers.A wider estimate shows that this may be as high as 100,000. cAs a profession, environmental engineering is now larger thanbiomedical, materials and chemical engineering (which in 2002had 8,000, 33,000 and 25,000 members, respectively) and trendsshow that it is growing more quickly.The predicted 30 per cent growth in the number of environmentalengineers to 65,000 by 2012 will account for 5 per cent of allengineering jobs created over the decade ending in 2012. Forcomparison, 11 per cent will be in civil engineering, 14 per centin mechanical engineering, 1 per cent in biomedical engineering,2 per cent in chemical engineering, and 4 per cent in aerospaceengineering. dFinal Report of the Joint Task Force for the Establishment of a Professional Societyfor Environmental Engineers of the American Academy of EnvironmentalEngineers (AAEE) and the Association of Environmental Engineering and ScienceProfessors (AEESP), September 2006.United States Bureau of Labor Statistics website: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htmThis higher estimate is based on the fact is that 34.5 per cent of the members ofthe American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) now classify themselves as environmentalengineers and, depending on who counts them, there are 228,000to 330,000 civil engineers in the U.S. (based on 2002 U.S. government estimateand 2000 U.S. National Science Foundation estimate, respectively).S. Jones et al. 2005. An Initial Effort to Count Environmental Engineers in theUSA. Environmental Engineering Science, Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 772–787.As knowledge about the extent and complexity of the environmentalchallenge has grown, it has become clear that expertisedeveloped as part of the environmental engineering disciplineover the last two decades will be increasingly important. However,the challenge is far too great, and the time to respond tooshort to expect environmental engineers to take care of all theenvironmental issues for the entire profession; environmentalengineering is not a substitute for sustainable engineering. Rather,critical knowledge and skills in environmental science, previouslyonly taught in environmental engineering, must be quickly andeffectively integrated across all engineering disciplines. Meanwhile,the environmental engineering discipline itself must continueto evolve as an advanced and specialist field, for examplein such areas as modeling, monitoring, impact assessment, pollutioncontrol, evaluation and collaborative design.131