Report on civil engineering research needed in order to respond to future challenges and promote well-being and social inclusion alongside contributing to future economic growth, resilience and environmental protection, whilst living within planetary boundaries.
Civil Engineering is about creating, improving and protecting the environment in which we live. It provides the facilities needed for commerce, industry and day-to-day life, such as water and energy supply, transport and buildings. This is and has always been done against a background of change.
However the rate of change is now increasingly rapid, bringing a number of challenges arising from an increasing and ageing population accompanied by increasing urbanisation, a vast infrastructure legacy that needs to be maintained or replaced, and the need to move to a low carbon economy, whilst not further compromising biodiversity. This is not being driven by a single issue (such as climate change) but is the result of the complex interaction of many pressures bumping up against what the planet can actually provide. We have therefore chosen to frame the future research agenda within the context of planetary boundaries, as recently proposed by the science community.
How we engineer our infrastructure in the future is likely to have a major influence on our ability to live within the sort of planetary boundaries being proposed. Given the operational life of most infrastructure and the lead time for developing new infrastructure, only by starting to make changes now can we hope to have an impact on our encroachment of these boundaries over the next 20-50 years. Changes introduced to meet new objectives may in themselves increase or change demand (e.g. rapid development of light / local rail systems or a shift to using electric cars as part of the move to a low carbon society), or bring the industry sector into conflict with other legislative requirements (e.g. increased waste water treatment to meet environmental needs, which increases energy use). There may therefore also be a need to regulate demand, or compromise on socio-environmental objectives. It follows that civil engineering research will need to be a collaborative venture with a range of other disciplines.
In the full paper we propose a vision for civil engineering to promote well-being and social inclusion alongside contributing to future economic growth, resilience and environmental protection, whilst living within planetary boundaries. This builds on the work of the ICE to inform this debate through its various policy statements and State of the Nation reports.
The full report is available at http://www.ice.org.uk/Information-resources/Document-Library/Engineering-to-live-within-planetary-boundaries
In the very short-term this may need to focus on rapid economic benefit, in which civil engineering improvements from effective research can play a key role as part of overall efficiency gains in various fields. This moves quickly to an emphasis on:
“delivering a vibrant economy in which the UK plays its part in reducing the pressure on planetary boundaries”
Some of the research needed to deliver this vision has been outlined and we would emphasise two aspects of this agenda:
- (i)The need for multi-disciplinary research and cross-profession collaboration to deliver the change needed
- (ii)The need for rapid development of the research base to underpin integrated planning at multiple scales that recognises the interplay of complex dynamic networks.
Finally, we have endeavoured to explain why civil engineering needs a new framework for research translation. We would encourage Infrastructure UK, or some other appropriate arm of government, to implement a number of steps that would enable a closer working partnership between funders, industry and academia, namely to:
- encourage the Research Councils to promote the fundamental research required to address the strategic needs identified;
- stimulate closer working between industry and academia, making use of RTOs where they have a role to play. This might involve fiscal measures, such as re-focussing R&D tax credits to science and engineering research that has a societal or environmental benefit, rather than having to be primarily an advance in science;
- progress some of the research to address long-term societal needs by embedding this as a requirement within the construction scheme procurement processes.
There may be other ways of achieving the same objective and we would encourage the industry, working with government, to seek a solution that can be adopted as quickly as possible.
For further information on the report, please contact Mike Chrimes, Acting Director of Engineering, Policy and Innovation at the Institution of Civil Engineers and Head of Knowledge Transfer, on 020 7665 2251 or mike.chrimes@ice.org.uk.