Civil and Environmental Engineering

Introduction

Civil engineering is a scientific practice that deals with design of structures, their construction, and maintenance in an environment. This discipline finds its application in an environment and has a tremendous effect on it. It shapes and reshapes the surrounding to diverse designs. The environmental engineering aspect deals with matters that pertain to the appropriate maintenance of environment. It involves practices like water treatment, sewerage purification, and air purification.

Urban Engineering

Urban/municipal engineering is an aspect of civil and environmental engineering. It includes all types of engineering, but this paper focuses on the civil and environmental side, which play a significant role as it concerns engineering in urban areas. The article on urban engineering outlines various issues that pertain to this field.

The Practice/Concerns

Urban engineering deals with designing urban structures and bringing the designs into life. In most cases, maintenance of the existing structures in any existing urban centre takes great authorities’ attention. Sometimes urban engineering may be hard to differentiate from urban planning. In urban centers, we find structures such as houses, roads, sidewalks, bridges, water supply networks, solid waste management, water collection, and treatment sites, sewers and many other infrastructures. These amenities require engineering knowledge.

Any city/urban area get its description from the structures that it harbors. A beautiful city has beautiful buildings, which are well-maintained. In modern civil engineering, there has been a significant advancement in the types of buildings that arise in cities across the world. Mega-housing structures and beautiful sceneries are numerous in many cities. The world mourned the collapse of the twin towers in 2001, but cities like Dubai have seen the rise of powerful structures such as tall Burj Khalifa which is 829.84 meters. In the past, it was like a dream in the oblivion, but today structural construction takes place even in the oceans, in the water. They are amazing engineering facts indeed. Beautiful bridges and flyovers are widespread. The historical London Bridge is familiar to even little children. China currently hosts the world longest bridge over water; the Quindao Haiwan Bridge. Today, cities across the world make use of overhead bridges and flyovers on their highways to combat traffic snarl-up, which had been a tremendous problem in the past. The flyovers in Dallas, Texas are one to note.

Transportation systems are a vital structural requirement in any urban area. In fact, no city can develop if it is isolated from the rest of the world due to poor air and road traffic. Good airports, roads, and water ways are, therefore, used to open up the city for economic conditioning. In the environmental aspect, sewer systems are mandatory structures. Human waste from houses, offices, hospitals and other areas must always get their way out of human residence. It is done with the help of sewer systems. An elaborate sewer system is, therefore, a vital in any urban setting. It requires engineering knowledge to actualize and supervise. Solid wastes collection is often performed in estates and other social places. Contracted companies or municipal councils do the collection and disposal. Incinerators are used to eliminate the waste. It can be recycled as well. In urban engineering, water treatment systems are the structures that apply engineering discipline.

These construction efforts involve many calculations beyond a layman’s understanding. It starts when surveyors are viewing the land and making their relevant recommendations. The architects develop their designs and finally, the engineers do the calculations and approximations of material. They supervise the process in order to ensure that not even a single costly mistake occurs in the course of the construction.

Relevance to Engineers

Municipal engineering is a relevant contemporary concern to engineers because it involves many significant engineering aspects. Every country measures its infrastructural development mostly by the way it has done its city constructions. Urban places are the fast stop for visitors of any country and thus, urban engineering should posses a keen consideration. Urban engineering fields are a significant resource for students who pursue engineering career. Economic concentration is, to some extent, dependent on the infrastructure of the city. Therefore, in learning institutions, the emphasis should be given on urban engineering and planning. Thus, in the future there may be even better urban centers. It will help in the urbanization of rural places to the tunes of modern standards (Ian, 2009).

My Opinion

I believe that civil and environmental engineering plays a vital part in shaping up an urban area. The role of engineering discipline in urban areas is significant. There would not be beautiful world cities’ scenes without proper knowledge of solid engineering. I also believe that engineering dates to thousand years ago. As a matter of fact, according to the Bible, civil engineering started when God molded the earth and the heaven. The beautiful scenery in the Garden of Eden proves that God was particularly a good architect and engineer.

Conclusion

Civil and environmental engineering is a necessary science. In the world’s development goals, this field will undoubtedly play one of the most important roles. There are many infrastructures that are strongly and beautifully present the importance of civil and environmental engineering.