Engineering a sustainable built environment
Summary
This course explicitly addresses the issue of sustainability in the built environment through an engineering lens. It covers the sustainability and energy landscape, approaches to sustainability in civil engineering, and specific tools for enacting sustainability in civil engineering.
Content
The course introduces the intersections between different areas of civil engineering and sustainability topics, the engineering knowledge needed to address sustainability topics, and engineering tools that can be used to analyze and assess sustainability.
Topics covered include:
- The sustainability landscape
- Energy supply and demand
- Mobility and sustainability
- Materials and structures
- Natural systems
- Sustainability in the civil engineering profession
Engineering knowledge and tools covered include:
- Energy
- Systems thinking
- Life cycle assessment
- Engineering economics and decision-making
Keywords
Sustainability, energy, life-cycle assessment, systems thinking, civil engineering
Learning Prerequisites
Required courses
None
Important concepts to start the course
None
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, the student must be able to:
- Explain to an engineer, designer, policy-maker, or other professional why sustainability is important in civil engineering.
- Assess / Evaluate and be critical of metrics used to measure sustainability.
- Analyze civil engineering systems in the context of sustainability.
- Quantify environmental, economic, and social impacts of the built environment.
- Construct models of systems to understand complexity of engineered civil systems.
Transversal skills
- Communicate effectively, being understood, including across different languages and cultures.
- Demonstrate the capacity for critical thinking
- Take account of the social and human dimensions of the engineering profession.
- Take responsibility for environmental impacts of her/ his actions and decisions.
Teaching methods
Lectures, exercises, discussion
Expected student activities
Attend lectures, participate in class discussions and activities, complete exercises
Assessment methods
Midterm exam (30%)
Exercises (20%)
Final exam (50%)
Supervision
| Office hours | Yes |
| Assistants | Yes |
| Forum | Yes |
In the programs
- Semester: Fall
- Exam form: Written (winter session)
- Subject examined: Engineering a sustainable built environment
- Lecture: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Exercises: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Type: mandatory
- Semester: Fall
- Exam form: Written (winter session)
- Subject examined: Engineering a sustainable built environment
- Lecture: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Exercises: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Type: mandatory