The role of an engineer in modern society

Environmental Engineering

Environmental Engineers

Of the many different sectors in which engineers can find employment, one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding areas is that of environmental engineering. This is a rather broad field that can incorporate many different types of engineering knowledge and practices, but is essentially and primarily concerned with the protection and/or rehabilitation of the planet's natural resources -- the water, air, and land -- for the purposes of creating lower-impact and sustainable methods for continuing human activities (Salvato et al. 2003). This can mean finding ways to reduce pollution into waterways and the atmosphere, ways of removing pollutants that have already been released, effective ways of managing not only pollution but other impacts on the environment from industrial and commercial endeavors, and a host of other areas of human activity and endeavor.

Environmental engineers have become of increasing importance in recent years, not only for the elimination of pollution and the minimization of current impacts of human commerce and life on the environment, but also in the creation of new technologies that make for more sustainable living (Reible 1999). This means that many building projects, technology designs, governmental agencies and policy advising groups need input from environmental engineers, and this need is only growing (Reible 1999). This makes environmental engineering an excellent field for anyone who has the essential skills to study engineering, as well as a well established ability to take in a number of complex considerations and has a strong commitment to helping improve humanity's relationship with the environment.

There are several key characteristics that must be possessed by successful environmental engineers. The number of various factors that come into play in most environmental issues will require the understanding and coordination of a large amount of diverse types of data from a number of sources, so an environmental engineer must have a wide array of knowledge and a quick grasp of new and changing circumstances and information (Weiner et al. 2003). An innovative view is also a key characteristic that environmental engineers ought to possess to maximize their success in this field; though many of the problems facing the environment are decades old, they require new solutions for which there is often no real infrastructure or previous experience to build on. Enjoying the collection of knowledge and thinking of creative new ways to utilize that knowledge to solve environmental problems are essential traits of the environmental engineer.

Though the methods for solving environmental problems might be new, the skills necessary to develop and implement these solutions are not. Along with the desire and ability to take in a wide array of information and make complex decisions based on this information, environmental engineers must have the ability to plan ahead using the possible developments in this information. Long-term planning abilities, as well as the ability to communicate environmental issues and their solutions to non-engineers, are both essential skills that environmental engineers must possess (Lindner & Nyberg 1973). Without these abilities, the work of environmental engineers would not be effectively developed or implemented; they must be practically applied in the long-term in order to be useful.