• Question: what do u think engineering will be like in 50 years?

    Asked by cookie monster to Natalie, Mark on 13 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by _Hickman_.
    • Photo: Natalie Wride

      Natalie Wride answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Hi Cookie Monster 🙂 (I like your name!)

      This is a great question and I think it’s really difficult to answer – I wish I had a crystal ball that could tell me! I think there’s a couple of things that will happen in Civil Engineering over the next 50 years though (I see you want to be an Architect and you’re a big fan of Mr. Eiffel so I’ll focus on this 🙂 ) I started off wanting to be an Architect too!!

      The first is I think projects will become a lot more complex in places that are quite heavily populated with construction and buildings (like the UK and parts of the USA and Australia). This is because when we start running out of land to build on, we look at land we previously avoided (maybe because there was lots of mining there in the 1800’s or because the soil is extremely soft there). This means Engineers are going to have to think a lot more about the ground for these projects as building on it is more risky.

      The second thing is I think there will be more of a focus on ‘sustainable’ housing. What I mean is we’ll probably still have those huge skyscrapers that are big status symbols for countries, but people will start to think a lot more about home construction in areas of shanty towns and areas of poverty to improve their quality of living. This is also important when we think about natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, earthquake and landslides to provide them with protection. Some of these natural events might happen more with climate change over the next 50 years. If you think – no one ever looks at pictures following an earthquake or tsunami and says ‘I wonder why all these homes are destroyed?’ – they say ‘I wonder why that one building is still standing!!!’ So hopefully in the next 50 years we’ll flip this attitude!!

      On top of these, I think we’ll be using new and different materials – moving away from steel and concrete which are used a lot at the moment. I think recycled material will be used more in projects and more plastic or fibre based materials will be used in place of concrete and steel especially 🙂

      Do you have any ideas what will happen in the next 50 years?!

    • Photo: Mark Gowan

      Mark Gowan answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      Hi CookieMonster and Hickman

      I think Engineering in 50 years time will be looking at ways we can produce enough water to deal with the increasing population and the effects of climate change.
      We will be looking at new materials and thinking how irresponsible we were using so many rare metals in the production of smart phones, that we just threw away when they went out of fashion.

Comments