Civil Engineering Education In Making India A Knowledge Society
Prof I V Murali Krishna Ph D (IISc), FIE, MIEEE Centre for Spatial Information Technology JNT University-Hyderabad 500028 Fax 040-339 7648 E mail- iyyanki@icorg.org Web:www.icorg.org Introduction The growing need for efficient use of the earth's resources of land, air, water and raw materials as well as for efficient design, analysis and maintenance of civil structures requires a better insight in the spatial and temporal patterns of resources and activities. As such the present day society needs civil engineering education capable of providing such an insight. Added to this need, it can be noted that during the last ten years or so, after the technological revolution of the 80's, civil engineering education has apparently started having its share of "identity crisis" but also faces unique challenges. In the digital era, Civil Engineering, as other disciplines, faces a paradigm shift. We may advocate that the new paradigm constitutes only a state in the transition process and by no means can serve as a long-term solution. In this background what is the current scenario. What are the real issues and gaps? The external parameters for our education today are liberalization, globalization and privatization. The internal one is enabling our students to cultivate and display their potential abilities in engineering and technology that cannot be easily done within the constraints of the formal curricular framework. These abilities are significant coefficients of academic excellence in the equation between education on the one hand and career launch on the other hand. We have to keep track of national and global trends beyond the confines of the laboratories of civil engineering. We have to reorient our students to the emerging trends in IT itself. The availability of very high resolution remote sensing satellite data and GIS and terrain visualization software packages have given scope for addition of spatial dimension to Information technology. Added to this the announcement by US President Mr. Bill Clinton on 1st May 2000 about the removal of selective availability of US launched Global positioning system satellite data. The decision to discontinue selective availability is the latest measure in an ongoing effort to make GPS more responsive to civil commercial users worldwide. And the ultimate challenge is to transform the civil engineer to an IT enabled Civil engineer. The main problem lies in identification of obsolescence of curriculum. The rigidity of the curricula in our university system is in sharp contrast to the fluidity and volatility of the job market. What ails Civil Engineering Education? Is Information Technology, the only satisfying and rewarding profession for engineering and management graduates to-day. Considering high starting salary, overseas travel, better quality of life, flexible timings and informal work environment- it is very difficult to make the conventional engineering job as interesting as an IT profession. Therefore a conventional engineer always looks for a chance to switch to careers in the IT field. The industries, educational institutions, financial and funding bodies and in short the entire governance are shifting their focus. This is essentially to reap the benefits of this technological revolution, but by doing so the damage created to other professions is not understood. Therefore, it appears, as a country we are shifting our focus. It may be impossible to undo what has been done by that time. If all students take IT career what happens to the requirement of domain experts. This will have serious impact after a decade or so. So what are the real issues? Few Issues The conventional Civil engineering has 5 seemingly overlapping areas / diversifications, namely,
This is the major lacuna resulting in the lack of demand for civil engineering course. The specific developments in structural engineering have not increased the employment prospects and career growth of civil engineers during 80s and 90s. Even then, the biased course structure was never reviewed which ultimately lead to the present status of irrelevant and obsolete civil engineering education even in this decade of technology and thirst for knowledge society. However most significantly the developments in space applications in terms of very high resolution remote sensing satellites, geographic information systems software and information technology, have lead to the emergence of new areas of disciplines, new challenges and enlarged requirements of civil engineering profession to cater to some of the following topics / tasks:
Redefining the graduate Civil Engineering Curriculum There is a clear focus on the need for IT enabled civil engineers. In this emerging scenario the present course structure of Civil Engineering requires bifurcation into two branches. These two branches can be named or grouped into the following-
This branch deals with convenmtional civil engineering with 60 percent emphasis on Structural engineering and 25 percent on IT related subjects and the non structural engineering Civil engineering subjects constitute remaining 15 percent. The course broadly covers- Theory of Structures, Structural engineering, geo-technical engineering, AutoCAD, Geographic Information systems, computer aided structural design and analysis-geomorphology, computer graphics and IT related subjects Environmental Information Technology-/ Geo-spatial Information Technology - Surveying, Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems, soft copy Photogrammetry, Transportation, Water Resources, Irrigation management, Urban planning, global positioning systems, digital image processing, Computer graphics and IT related subjects. As the topics of application of civil engineering profession are concerned with earth, environment and people, there is a definite requirement for visualization of products, processes, terrain and structures. As such the development and application of visualization software tools should be accorded high priority in the curriculum. Domain Experts- From the application point of view in most fields of software developed to analyze the theme of concern and the technology in the GIS system the terrain knowledge plays a significant role. Many applications dealing with GIS are subjected to the regulations and the law in the application fields. For example the design of cables for electricity distribution is subjected to municipal permission following the laws on physical planning. Another example is the property registration for real estate that is legally described by a cadastral law. In order to educate the students in the fields the society is asking for, in many universities in the world GIS is taught as apart of the curriculum of different subjects. GIS is a complex technique requiring many domain specific skills. No simple IT exposure would help to become a GIS professional. In this background, mention may be made of better capability of IT enabled domain expert in handling problems concerned with earth, environment and people than a mere IT Professional. A geospatial IT enabled Water resource engineer only can handle the problem of irrigation or dam design than an ordinary IT professional with excellent software development capabilities. A spatial information technologist can better design communication tower network considering the GIS simulated line of sight communication criterion than a conventional engineer. So we need to develop more IT enriched conventional engineering branches than mere IT courses. There will be huge demand for domain experts with IT knowledge. The suggested revision of course content and course structure in the civil engineering branch is a step in this direction. This message should be conveyed to students so that the demand will be uniform for all IT enriched conventional engineering branches. And the challenge for IT education is to identify students with the potential abilities and domain specific aptitudes and encourage them to venture into such new fields. Conclusions
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