BEng Civil Engineering

Over the past few years, there have been considerable concerns raised about the capacity and capability of our current infrastructure systems to be resilient to environmental change and minimize their impact on climate change and environmental sustainability. We will continue to depend on our current assets for decades to come meanwhile digitalisation and decentralisation are promising to transform new infrastructure systems. This unit draw’s on the Department of MACE’s expertise in this area to highlight large scale national and global challenges that need the input of civil engineers. It will inspire students by introducing challenges to critical infrastructures, and the possibilities afforded by new materials and technologies to increase the resilience to key sectors of energy, transport and water.

The unit aims to enable students to:

- describe and explain the concepts of sustainability and resilience  and the main implications for the infrastructure

- describe and explain the main future challenges for the critical infrastructure of key sectors (energy, transport, and water)

- describe and explain technologies and materials significant for the sustainability and resilience of infrastructure   

Syllabus:

• Intro to sustainability and infrastructure (inc climate change mitigation, material efficiency, re-use of assets and materials, circular economy).
• Intro to resilience in context of infrastructure (inc vulnerability, risk, and climate change adaptation).
• Challenges in Energy Systems: Existing/new technologies, environmental impacts, Socio-political factors, role in determining vulnerability and resilience, Interaction between sectors and integrated solutions. Multidimensional aspects of large, infrastructure systems.
• Field trip to Port of Liverpool to encounter the nexus of shipping, rail and road, energy commodities, energy assets and sea level rise. 
• Challenges in Water Systems: Intro to infrastructure, climate impacts, flooding, droughts, heat waves, impact on food production. Climate impacts, flooding, impact on other infrastructure.
• Challenges in Transport Systems and Infrastructure: Road, shipping, rail, aviation.

The Future: Digitalisation, Decarbonisation, Decentralisation and Demographic change, Implications of future cities, intelligent transport, smart monitoring, internet of things, AI & AVs, decentralised energy, demographic change, ageing and migration.

Via Blackboard