An Essay on the Need of Paradigm Shift in Civil Engineering Education

Need of Paradigm Shift in Civil Engineering Education

Dr Sanjiv Aggarwal

Head of Civil Engineering Department

GZS College of Engineering & Technology

Bathinda

Introduction

The growing need for efficient use of the earth's resources of land, air, water and raw materials as well as for efficient design, analysis and maintenance of civil structures requires a better insight in the spatial and temporal patterns of resources and activities. As such the present day society needs civil engineering education capable of providing such an insight.

Added to this need, it can be noted that during the last ten years or so, after the technological revolution of the 80's, civil engineering education has apparently started having its share of identity crisis but also faces unique challenges. In the digital era, Civil Engineering, as other disciplines, faces a paradigm shift. We may advocate that the new paradigm constitutes only a state in the transition process and by no means can serve as a long-term solution.

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The external parameters for our education today are liberalization, globalization and privatization. The internal one is enabling our students to cultivate and display their potential abilities in engineering and technology that cannot be easily done within the constraints of the formal curricular framework. These abilities are significant coefficients of academic excellence in the equation between education on the one hand and career launch on the other hand. We have to keep track of national and global trends beyond the confines of the laboratories of civil engineering. We have to reorient our students to the emerging trends in IT itself.

The availability of very high resolution remote sensing satellite data and GIS and terrain visualization software packages have given scope for addition of spatial dimension to Information technology. The decision to discontinue selective availability of Global positioning system satellite data is the latest measure in an ongoing effort to make GPS more responsive to civil commercial users worldwide. And the ultimate challenge is to transform the civil engineer to an IT enabled civil engineer. The main problem lies in identification of obsolescence of curriculum. The rigidity of the curricula in our university system is in sharp contrast to the fluidity and volatility of the job market.

What ails Civil Engineering Education

Is Information Technology, the only satisfying and rewarding profession for engineering and management graduates to-day. Considering high starting salary, overseas travel, better quality of life, flexible timings and informal work environment- it is very difficult to make the conventional engineering job as interesting as an IT profession. Therefore a conventional engineer always looks for a chance to switch to careers in the IT field. The industries, educational institutions, financial and funding bodies and in short the entire governance are shifting their focus. This is essentially to reap the benefits of this technological revolution, but by doing so the damage created to other professions is not understood. Therefore, it appears, as a country we are shifting our focus. It may be impossible to undo what has been done by that time. If all students take IT career what happens to the

requirement of domain experts. This will have serious impact after a decade or so.

Few Issues

The conventional Civil engineering has 6 seemingly overlapping areas / diversifications, namely,

. Water Resources engineering,

. Geotechnical engineering

. Transportation engineering,

. Geomatics engineering

. Structural engineering, and

. Environmental engineering.

Conventionally the courses being taught to the students in the Civil Engineering branch currently have very high bias towards structural engineering. Structural engineering subjects take about 50 percent of total course load while the remaining 5 areas take 50 percent, all together. It is a paradox that most of the final year civil student's projects end up with design of different structures that have no relevance to current or near future needs of industry. This is the major lacuna resulting in the lack of demand for civil engineering course. The specific developments in structural engineering have not increased the employment prospects and career growth of civil engineers during 80s and 90s. Even then, the biased course structure was never reviewed which ultimately lead to the present status of irrelevant and obsolete civil engineering education even in this decade of technology and thirst for knowledge society.

However most significantly the developments in space applications in terms of very high resolution remote sensing satellites, geographic information systems software and information technology, have lead to the emergence of new areas of disciplines, new challenges and enlarged requirements of civil engineering profession to cater to some of the following tasks:

. Environmental management

. Transportation management

. Water Resource management

. Business and Services management

. Automated City and rural area road network map 

Applications in Urban infrastructure, waste management and comprehensive planning

Property insurance and crisis management

. Disaster management

. Vehicle routing, tracking and mapping

Agriculture / Forest management

. Topographical surveying

Data simulation, visualization

. Real estate, banking, media, entertainment, tourism

. Electric power supply utilities planning

. Telecommunications

The above-mentioned tasks of civil engineering profession are dependent on the specific knowledge of the following

. Spatial data acquisition and positioning

. Processing, analysis and display of spatial data

. Computational methods in geoinformatics

Geomorphology

. Geodesy

. Data conversion

. Relational and object oriented Database management systems

. Large scale engineering surveys

. Advanced methods in digital Remote Sensing

Integrated land and environmental information systems

. Digital photogrammetry

. Digital cartography

. Urban and regional planning using GIS

. Environmental impact assessment

Information systems in transportation

. Spatial databases

. Assessing land value and land use

. Surveying using Global positioning systems

. Design of GPS network

. Fundamentals of electronics and communication systems

. Networking

. Web based GIS

. E commerce and GIS applications

Knowledge of the above topics is what the industry expects today from a Civil Engineer. This essentially revolves around creation of a Geo Spatial IT enabled Civil engineer. This is right direction for the paradigm shift that meets the requirements of society at large. The new millennium foresees emergence of a Geo Spatial IT enabled Civil engineer. This requires restructuring the present curriculum.

Redefining the Undergraduate Civil Engineering Curriculum

There is a clear focus on the need for IT enabled civil engineers. In this emerging scenario the present course structure of Civil Engineering requires bifurcation into two branches. These two branches can be named or grouped into the following

. Civil and Structural Engineering

. Environmental Information Technology or Geo-spatial Information Technology

Civil and Structural Engineering - This branch shall deal with conventional civil engineering with 60 percent emphasis on Structural engineering and 25 percent on IT related subjects and the non structural engineering Civil engineering subjects constitute remaining 15 percent. The course broadly covers- Theory of Structures, Structural engineering, geo-technical engineering, AutoCAD, Geographic Information systems, computer aided structural design and analysis-geomorphology, computer graphics and IT related subjects.

Environmental Information Technology or Geo-spatial Information Technology - This branch shall comprise of Surveying, Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems, Photogrammetry, Transportation, Water Resources, Irrigation Management, Urban Planning, Global Positioning Systems, Digital Image Processing, Computer Graphics and IT related subjects. As the topics of application of civil engineering profession are concerned with earth, environment and people, there is a definite requirement for visualization of products, processes, terrain and structures. As such the development and application of visualization software tools should be accorded high priority in the curriculum.

Domain Experts

From the application point of view in most fields of software developed to analyze the theme of concern and the technology in the GIS system the terrain knowledge plays a significant role. Many applications dealing with GIS are subjected to the regulations and the law in the application fields. For example the design of cables for electricity distribution is subjected to municipal permission following the laws on physical planning. Another example is the property registration for real estate that is legally described by a cadastral law. In order to educate the students in the fields the society is asking for, in many universities in the world GIS is taught as apart of the curriculum of different subjects. GIS is a complex technique requiring many domain specific skills. No simple IT exposure would help to become a GIS professional.

In this background, mention may be made of better capability of IT enabled domain expert in handling problems concerned with earth, environment and people than a mere IT Professional. A geospatial IT enabled Water resource engineer only can handle the problem of irrigation or dam design than an ordinary IT professional with excellent software development capabilities. A spatial information technologist can better design communication tower network considering the GIS simulated line of sight communication criterion than a conventional engineer. So we need to develop more IT enriched conventional engineering branches than mere IT courses. There will be huge demand for domain experts with IT knowledge. The suggested revision of course content and course structure in the civil engineering branch is a step in this direction. This message should be conveyed to students so that the demand will be uniform for all IT enriched conventional engineering branches. And the challenge for IT education is to identify students with the potential abilities and domain specific aptitudes and encourage them to venture into such new fields.

Conclusions

We are currently at the early but secure and irreversible stages of a remarkable and far reaching technological revolution. An essential part of the new development is to make attempts to resolve the pressing environmental problems and preserve the global eco-system. The agents of change are driving a new paradigm shift today. The signs are all around us. The introduction of the personal computer and the internet impacted both personal and business environments, and is a catalyst for a paradigm shift. New issues are emerging as a sequel of this shift in focus. Classical engineering is to take the back burner. Multidisciplinary Engineering Sciences integrating the sciences with engineering has created a new demand on the engineering and technological institutions and has consequently brought in new challenges for them. Civil Engineering education is no exception. There is a clear focus on the need for IT enabled civil engineers. There is need for IT enabled domain experts than just IT top notch professionals The availability of space application tools like very high resolution remote sensing data, GIS and soft copy photogrammetry tools and web based applications of GIS threw new demands on the level of expertize of civil engineers. The civil engineer professional concerned with IT career requires reincarnation as a spatial IT enabled engineer in order to enjoy the fruits of IT and its development.