Soft Methods in Earth Systems Engineering

Abstract

The narrowly defined technical problems that occupied civil engineers during the last century and a half, such as the mechanics of the materials steel, concrete and water, have for most practical purposes been solved. The outstanding challenges relate to interactions between technological systems, the natural environment and human society, at a range of scales up to the global. Management of these coupled systems is obviously a problem of decision making under uncertainty, informed by, on the one hand, sometimes quite dense datasets but, on the other, perhaps only the vaguest of intuitions about the behaviour of the systems in question. An extension of the scope of engineering from a narrowly focussed technical activity to one that more consciously engages with society and the natural environment means that approaches based upon the strictures of individual decision rationality may have to be modified as part of collective and perhaps highly contested decision processes.