Sustainable Engineering for Civil and Environmental Systems (Undergraduate)

Sustainable engineering is the development of engineering solutions to advance human well-being while minimizing adverse impacts on the economy, environment, and the society. It particularly focuses on analyzing how efficiently and sustainably we manage physical materials required for our production and consumption systems. Circular economy, which embodies this concept of resource efficiency, has been promoted worldwide to reduce resource consumption and associated environmental impacts, focusing on key products such as electronics, vehicles and batteries, packaging, plastics, building and construction, textiles, water resources, food and nutrients. The civil and environmental systems such as cities and their built environment, transportation network, and environmental infrastructure, draw increasing attention in sustainable engineering due to their massive resource consumption and associated generation of waste and greenhouse gases. Therefore, how to design, built, operate, and manage the civil and environmental systems would play a crucial role in meeting the net-zero targets and sustainable development goals. This course targets students in civil and environmental engineering to understand fundamental principles, concepts, methods, and applications of sustainable engineering.