The American Society of Civil Engineer’s new effort, Future World Vision: Infrastructure Reimagined, asks civil engineers to consider the shifts in ways we learn, practice, and manage our profession in the upcoming decades. With rapid development in technology approaching, the most important global trends civil engineers will need to consider are:

• Climate change
• Alternative energy
• High-tech construction
• Autonomous vehicles (AVs)
• Smart cities
• Public funding

The ways these trends intersect and affect one another will be critical in determining the ways civil engineers utilize their services in the future. Transportation needs, artificial intelligence, and new forms of construction will significantly change our everyday lives as we continue to progress, and keeping up with these trends early-on allows us to envision ways to accommodate this new environment.

For example, growing needs in transportation automation lead us to consider new ways people and goods will be moved more efficiently. If automated vehicles and hyperloop public transportation become commonplace, soon enough it will fundamentally affect the ways cities are built around them, which in turn would impact almost any design. With hyperloop plans already considered in many major cities worldwide, changes in the ways we live, work, and commute are only a few ways technology will change the field in the future.

To learn more about the full Future World Vision effort, take a look at their website and full report here. 

A school district in Rockford, Illinois has recently debuted a school designed to imitate a town hall with an open, pragmatic spatial layout.

The prototype, designed along with students, features a central “town hall” surrounded by classrooms targeted to students based on their age groupings from kindergarten to fifth grade. It unites the school’s gym, cafeteria, art classrooms, library, and its other public spaces. Workshops were conducted with students to develop new ideas based on how the students view their surroundings, leading to the unique design. The architecture directly engages children and is both stimulating and educational. Each space contains geometric, colorful windows, movable furniture, and more development behind the prototype’s spatial reasoning.

​Experts have long worried about keeping a new generation of students focused in school, and new technologies have arisen to address the issue. But Rockford takes a different perspective by communicating with students directly and changing the spaces they see daily into something engaging and beneficial. Learn more about this innovative school prototype.