CSA Identifies Climate Change Education Needs for Infrastructure Engineers
March 11, 2008 // Published as a news service by IHS
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The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) released Climate Change and Infrastructure Engineering: Moving Toward a New Curriculum, a special report to identify specific areas of engineering curricula and continuing education programs that could be improved and updated to better address the impact of climate change on civil infrastructure.
The CSA project, funded by Infrastructure Canada through its Knowledge-Building, Outreach and Awareness Program (KOA), examined the current state of knowledge of climate change issues and responses, along with the level of awareness and use of such knowledge in the day-to-day work of infrastructure engineers.
According to CSA, the goal was to establish a baseline for the present state of climate change topics within engineering curricula and to propose an educational framework to improve knowledge and awareness over time.
Climate change represents a relatively new challenge for most engineering disciplines and the report focuses on preparing engineers to deal with the effects of a changing climate and provide them with the tools and foundation to apply their engineering knowledge in a new way.
As part of the project, CSA examined the course offerings of eight Canadian universities and three continuing education programs for references to important broad climate change topics.
Experts said risk assessment and risk management are examples of important topics identified in the report that will need to play a greater role in future engineering decision-making. It will be the responsibility of universities, continuing education providers and engineers themselves to ensure that the engineering community is prepared to deliver the appropriate responses and solutions to a changing climate.
CSA also conducted an independent survey aimed at Canada's professional engineers. The results of this survey were analyzed within the context of the project to assess the awareness of climate change issues as they relate to real-life engineering practice, familiarity with the identified high priority topics and familiarity with tools and techniques that are considered important.
The survey results indicated that a majority of the engineers agreed that global climate change will affect their practice. However, very few routinely consider climate change, and most claim they require more information before integrating climate change in their day-to-day engineering decisions.
Information gathered through the report will also be used to assist CSA's volunteer technical committee experts and staff in the development and maintenance of a broad range of standards relating to urban/rural infrastructure.
In addition, CSA will share any lessons learned with Canada's network of more than 160,000 engineering practitioners through a broad range of communications media including articles, presentations and an interactive web site.
The CSA report is available at www.infraengineers.ca or at www.csa.ca/climatechange/downloads.
Source: Canadian Standards Association (CSA).