Abstract
Many of the specialisms on which infrastructure and cities rely for their effective design, construction, operation, governance, management and maintenance are underpinned by the principles of certainty, accuracy, precision and prediction. Not least of these is civil engineering. Yet infrastructures and cities are characterised by complexity and emergence. In recent decades, understandings of infrastructures and cities have begun to reflect these properties, and in particular, transdisciplinarity is promoted as critical to advancing these new understandings. However, this presents conceptual and operational challenges for civil engineering, as there is a fundamental mismatch between the certainty, accuracy and precision required by engineers and the complexity and emergence of transdisciplinary research approaches. The forms of value arising from these research approaches are themselves contentious, leaving engineers exposed to competing claims and making them ill prepared to exploit new insights to full advantage. This briefing explores these mismatches and contentions and proposes a set of four principles that underpin successful transdisciplinary research, laying the foundation for transforming research in infrastructure and cities by leveraging emergent, transdisciplinary approaches.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 19-23 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Smart Infrastructure and Construction |
Volume | 173 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 24 Jul 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2020 ICE Publishing: All rights reserved.
Keywords
- design methods & aids
- infrastructure planning
- urban regeneration
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Information Systems
- Civil and Structural Engineering
- Computer Science Applications
- Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design