Climate Change Adaptation for infrastructure
Designed New Course. This is one of the first courses in the world focused on climate change resilience in civil and environmental engineering. Taught 2014-Present, core course in the Climate Adaptation for Infrastructure Concentration
Climate change is a systems challenge that will affect infrastructure and sociotechnical systems, and engineers have a responsibility to design for future conditions. While the specific timing and magnitude of local climate change impacts are uncertain, long-lived civil engineering built and natural infrastructure will need to be resilient to these potential impacts. Engineers designing for climate change adaptation require the tools to interpret and use climate model outputs, maximize resilience, value co-benefits, not disproportionately impact vulnerable populations, and minimize cost for existing and proposed energy, transportation, water, urban and other types of infrastructure. Students successfully completing this course will understand how climate change affects civil infrastructure and how to quantitatively incorporate resilient designs and co-benefits under uncertainty. Students will use open data to examine current adaptation engineering challenges, quantify solutions for built and natural infrastructure, and communicate their technical recommendations through policy briefs.
Energy Demand and Utilization
Substantially Redesigned Course. Taught 2014-Present. Core course in the Energy Science, Technology & Policy Program
Energy Demand & Utilization examines how human demands for energy have evolved over time and how they differ across nations. The course begins from a historical perspective and proceeds to an evaluation of present demand and synthesis of future projections. The course focuses on the technologies used in the different sectors: housing, commerce, food, industry and transportation. Students successfully completing this course will become familiar with a variety of tools for energy analysis, including some fundamentals of economic analysis, energy efficiency, and demand response. We will also analyze strategies for inducing the adoption of efficient technologies and consumption.
Exploring CEE: Infrastructure and Environment in a Changing World
Substantially Redesigned Course. Taught 2015-Present. Core core for CEE undergraduate course sequence.
Civil and Environmental Engineers (CEEs) engage in the planning, design, construction, operation, retrofit, demolition, and reuse of large-scale infrastructure that forms the backbone of all societies and economies. CEEs work at the dynamic interface of the built environment, information environment, and natural environment. Therefore, societal domains that require CEE expertise include smart cities and construction, sustainable energy and buildings, connected and automated transportation systems, resilient infrastructure, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and water management. Students will explore how sensing, data science, environmental science, life cycle systems and economic analysis, and infrastructure design are integrated to create a built environment that meets the needs of smart and connected communities while enhancing sustainability. Students work on team-based design-build projects that introduce principles from environmental, structural, construction engineering, and project management. Students learn technical skills as well as design considerations that include uncertainty, economics, and ethics, for modern and future infrastructure.
Innovation for Energy and the Environment
Substantially Redesigned Course, Co-taught 2009-2012
Issues in energy and the environment may be framed in different ways. Engineers may describe a technical system while social scientists may choose policy terms. To these views, this course adds the business and innovation dimensions, which provide additional motivation for change in these dynamic areas. The class will explore opportunities for economic, environmental and social value creation for several cases, each of which has its own set of considerations for resources, stakeholder perspectives, business challenges and technical opportunities. The course will emphasize utilization of methods, tools and frameworks to describe and evaluate potential innovation opportunities in the energy and environmental sectors. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to evaluate the economic and environmental aspects of business decisions in these sectors, and know how to assess possible adoption paths, impacts and benefits.
Energy Policy and Economics
Co-Taught in 2011, Core course, Energy Science, Technology & Policy Program
This course will review how past and future energy technology trajectories are intertwined with pathways of economic development, business investment decisions, social needs, and political priorities. Emphasis will be placed on clean energy and promising technological trajectories for the future. This course will explore how a wide variety of policy mechanisms- technology policy, utility regulation and restructuring, emissions policies, multilateral interventions and agreements, and corporate strategies-can shape energy use and the environmental impacts of energy systems. Study examples will draw from both developed and developing countries.