IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v11y2019i14p3789-d247366.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Toward a New Field of Global Engineering

Author

Listed:
  • Evan Thomas

    (Mortenson Center in Global Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder Colorado, CO 80303, USA)

Abstract

The Engineer’s role in addressing global poverty challenges has often been confined to village and community-scale interventions, product design and development, or large-scale infrastructure design and construction. Yet despite fifty years of these approaches, over half the world’s population still lives on less than $5.50 a day, the global burden of disease in low-income countries is overwhelmingly attributable to environmental health contaminants, and climate change is already negatively affecting people in developing countries. The conventional community, product or infrastructure focuses of development engineering is insufficient to address these global drivers that perpetuate poverty. The emerging field of Global Engineering can work to identify and address these structural issues. Global Engineering should be concerned with the unequal and unjust distribution of access to basic services such as water, sanitation, energy, food, transportation and shelter, and place an emphasis on identifying the drivers, determinants and solutions favoring equitable access. Technology development and validation, data collection and impact evaluation can contribute to evidence-based influence on policies and practice. Global Engineering envisions a world in which everyone has safe water, sanitation, energy, food, shelter and infrastructure, and can live in health, dignity, and prosperity.

Suggested Citation

  • Evan Thomas, 2019. "Toward a New Field of Global Engineering," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-11, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:14:p:3789-:d:247366
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/14/3789/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/14/3789/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Woodward, 2015. "Incrementum ad Absurdum: Global Growth, Inequality and Poverty Eradication in a Carbon-Constrained World," World Economic Review, World Economics Association, vol. 2015(4), pages 1-43, February.
    2. Evan Thomas & Bernard Amadei, 2010. "Accounting for human behavior, local conditions and organizational constraints in humanitarian development models," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 313-327, June.
    3. Jessica E. Tierney & Jason E. Smerdon & Kevin J. Anchukaitis & Richard Seager, 2013. "Multidecadal variability in East African hydroclimate controlled by the Indian Ocean," Nature, Nature, vol. 493(7432), pages 389-392, January.
    4. Bernard Amadei & Robyn Sandekian & Evan Thomas, 2009. "A Model for Sustainable Humanitarian Engineering Projects," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 1(4), pages 1-19, November.
    5. Richard Peet, 2014. "The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 14(4), pages 865-867.
    6. Kevin Donovan & Wyatt Brooks, 2017. "Eliminating Uncertainty in Market Access: The Impact of New Bridges in Rural Nicaragua," 2017 Meeting Papers 1607, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kyle Shirley & Abbie Noriega & Davey Levin & Christina Barstow, 2021. "Identifying Water Crossings in Rural Liberia and Rwanda Using Remote and Field-Based Methods," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-18, January.
    2. Vanden Eynde, Oliver & Wren-Lewis, Liam, 2021. "Complementarities in Infrastructure: Evidence from Rural India," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 2104, CEPREMAP.
    3. Anita Mukherjee & Shawn Cole & Jeremy Tobacman, 2021. "Targeting weather insurance markets," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(3), pages 757-784, September.
    4. Kevin A. Bryan & Heidi L. Williams, 2021. "Innovation: Market Failures and Public Policies," NBER Working Papers 29173, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Stephen Fox, 2019. "Moveable Production Systems for Sustainable Development and Trade: Limitations, Opportunities and Barriers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-21, September.
    6. María-José Terrón-López & Paloma J. Velasco-Quintana & Silvia Lavado-Anguera & María del Carmen Espinosa-Elvira, 2020. "Preparing Sustainable Engineers: A Project-Based Learning Experience in Logistics with Refugee Camps," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-17, June.
    7. Dhingra, Swati & Tenreyro, Silvana, 2020. "The Rise of Agribusiness and the Distributional Consequences of Policies on Intermediated Trade," CEPR Discussion Papers 14384, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Ockie J. H. Bosch & Nam C. Nguyen & Takashi Maeno & Toshiyuki Yasui, 2013. "Managing Complex Issues through Evolutionary Learning Laboratories," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 116-135, March.
    9. Yenan Wu & Di Long & Upmanu Lall & Bridget R. Scanlon & Fuqiang Tian & Xudong Fu & Jianshi Zhao & Jianyun Zhang & Hao Wang & Chunhong Hu, 2022. "Reconstructed eight-century streamflow in the Tibetan Plateau reveals contrasting regional variability and strong nonstationarity," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-13, December.
    10. Suzana Brown & Alan Mickelson, 2018. "A Decision Framework for Choosing Telecommunication Technologies in Limited-Resource Settings," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14, January.
    11. Phuong T. Nguyen & Sam Wells & Nam Nguyen, 2021. "Systemic Indicators for Rural Communities in Developing Countries: Empirical Evidence from Vietnam," Systemic Practice and Action Research, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 203-226, April.
    12. Wouter (W.) Zant, 2017. "Bridges," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 17-117/V, Tinbergen Institute, revised 06 Apr 2019.
    13. Trevor Hancock, 2019. "Beyond Science and Technology: Creating Planetary Health Needs Not Just ‘Head Stuff’, but Social Engagement and ‘Heart, Gut and Spirit’ Stuff," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-28, June.
    14. Sanjay G. Reddy & Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, 2015. "Global Development Goals: If At All, Why, When and How?," Working Papers 1523, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    15. Matthew J. Hannaford & Kristen K. Beck, 2021. "Rainfall variability in southeast and west-central Africa during the Little Ice Age: do documentary and proxy records agree?," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 168(1), pages 1-22, September.
    16. Candy Chamorro Gonzalez & Ketty Herrera Mendoza, 2021. "Green accounting in Colombia: a case study of the mining sector," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 6453-6465, April.
    17. Junmin Lee & Keungoui Kim & Hyunha Shin & Junseok Hwang, 2018. "Acceptance Factors of Appropriate Technology: Case of Water Purification Systems in Binh Dinh, Vietnam," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-20, June.
    18. Daoyan Guo & Hong Chen & Ruyin Long & Hui Lu & Qianyi Long, 2017. "A Co-Word Analysis of Organizational Constraints for Maintaining Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-19, October.
    19. Phuong T. Nguyen & Sam Wells, 2018. "Systemic Indicators for Rural Communities in Developing Economies: Bringing the Shared Vision into Being," Systemic Practice and Action Research, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 159-177, April.
    20. Agha Ali Akram & Shyamal Chowdhury & Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, 2017. "Effects of Emigration on Rural Labor Markets," NBER Working Papers 23929, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:14:p:3789-:d:247366. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.