Changing weather overturning engineering assumptions

(Cover image courtesy of ASCE Press)

Climate change has had, and will continue to have, an impact on civil infrastructure, says the latest publication from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

The Great Civil Engineering Overhaul details the effects of changing weather patterns on infrastructure, outlining alterations that may be required to enable civil engineers to work under changing climate conditions. This rethink is resulting in what ASCE says amounts to an overhaul in the civil engineering discipline.

Civil engineers design infrastructure projects in accordance with accepted engineering standards. These standards are based on the long-held assumption that past climate conditions are reliable predictors of future climate conditions. However, climate change has overturned these basic engineering assumptions, impacting the work that civil engineers do to ensure our built environment is safe, reliable, economical and long lasting.

In this ASCE Press title, author Bill Wallace addresses the need for infrastructure to withstand these new harsher climate conditions, to emit little or no greenhouse gases, and to be sustainable and equitable.  He encourages the engineering community to rework the current practices and embrace climate adaptation and use renewable energy sources.

The book is a resource that targets all civil engineers interested in sustainability, regardless of subdiscipline, providing a sound understanding, new ideas, and a path forward to designing and delivering projects that can operate reliably, safely, and effectively under changing climate conditions, says ASCE.

www.asce.org