Future Challenges and New-Trends in Civil Engineering for 2025 by Dr.

Nagaraj Sitaram, Professor Civil Engineering Department SJB Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India

Abstract
Civil Engineers find themselves as keepers of an impressive legacy while raising concerns about future directions. They know they must take more risks. They know they must show more leadership. They know they must control their own destiny rather than letting events control them.

1.0 Introduction:
Civil engineers are rightfully proud of their legacy. During the past century, clean water supplies have extended general life expectancies. Transportation systems serve as an economic and social engine. New bridges, blending strength and beauty, speed transport and bring communities closer together. Public and private construction, for which engineers provide the essential underpinnings of design and project oversight, produces hundreds of thousands of jobs and drives community development. From the functional and beautiful Golden Gate Bridge in the United States, Petronas Towers in Malaysia, Mahatma Gandhi Setu in Patna (India) to the largely hidden water supply and sanitary sewer systems, Civil engineers have made their mark in many aspects of the daily life of essentially everyone around the globe. Globalization has posed many challenges to Civil Engineers for sustainable development of infrastructure facilities. Such challenges include development of new materials and structural systems leading to effective use of urban land and conservation of environment & energy. Recent developments in structural materials, computational and experimental techniques have complemented rapid increase in construction of high rise buildings, transportation network, water supply & irrigation projects, power plants and industrial structures. Lessons learnt from performance of structures during natural and man-made hazards have contributed to improvement in structural engineering practices. The developments of new materials and techniques have led to evolution of durable and high performance composite materials. State-of-art research carried out in fracture and damage mechanics have led to newer development in analysis and design of structures. Advances in construction materials, equipment and design methodology need to percolate upto practicing civil and structural engineers to cope up with ever changing needs of industry. Therefore there is an urgent need for the researchers and the practicing engineers working in broad field of concrete technology, structural and geotechnical engineering to be updated of the latest trends and developments in these fields. The international conference on 'Current Trends in Technology' organized by Department of Civil Engineering aims to bring together researches, professionals to disseminate trends and advances in new materials and structural mechanics and to exchange their views and enrich their knowledge.

2.0 Issues and Trends:

Civil engineers know they cannot rest on their laurels. Current trends pose questions about the future of the profession. These questions address the role that civil engineers playand could play in society, in the ultimate integrity of the worlds infrastructure, and in the health of the natural environment. For many years, civil engineering leaders sounded the alarm about the lack of investment in maintaining and improving the infrastructure. Some of those shortcomings were tragically illustrated by the death and destruction caused by failures in which engineering designs, government funding, and the community oversight systems were all called into question. Civil engineers are painfully aware of the consequences for public health, safety, and welfare when the infrastructure does not get the attention it requires. The public has become increasingly aware that development need not result in a compromised and depleted environment. Enlightened citizens see sustainability, not as an unattainable ideal, but as a practical goal. To answer that call, civil engineers realize that they must increasingly transform themselves from designers and builders to project life-cycle sustainers.

3.0 New Pressures & Challenges:

Technology and market forces place additional pressures on how civil engineers play out their roles. Knowledge-based civil engineering software increasingly shifts routine engineering tasks from the realm of the engineer to that of the technologist and technician. How will this trend play out in the years ahead? Will civil engineers move further into a systems role? Civil engineering risks becoming commoditized. Clients and owners may increasingly use low-bid procurementand thus the lowest innovation denominatorrather than qualifications based selection and its opportunities to provide the best life-cycle options. In 2025, civil engineers will serve as master builders, environmental stewards, innovators and integrators, managers of risk and uncertainty, and leaders in shaping public policy. 1. Towards more human infrastructure : new design-models for arrangement and development of multi-modal streets, that can be used as a tool for dialogue and co-design between actors

2. Towards greener infrastructure: Eco-Road System - an integrated road concept, combining new technologies for the reduction of traffic nuisance (noise, air and water pollution), with in addition a special focus of TiO2 as air purifier ; Roads under layers with a high percentage of re-use to preserve rare resources. Crack free-semi-rigid pavement using industrial by-products; etc. 3. Towards more reliable infrastructure : as regard roads, new maintenance road processes allowing to perform maintenance works even under bad weather conditions and consequently to reduce traffic congestion by extending possible maintenance seasons ; as regard bridges, several solutions of innovative small and medium span bridges, light, durable, easy to prefabricate and assemble on site. 4. Towards safer and smarter infrastructure: the use of infra-red technology to improve drivers vision under bad weather conditions; in complex urban environments, the improvement of road safety through urban design interest of design models.

5. Bioengineering: The transition from the study of the human environment to that of the human body itself is a logical one. The same basic principles of solid and fluid mechanics can be applied to the monitoring, maintenance, and repair of the human body considered as a complex structural system. While the participation of civil engineers in this field has been limited until now, the Engineering Mechanics Division has maintained an active committee in this area and it is expected that it will attract more interest in the future. 6. Energy Production and Conservation: The search for new forms of energy and the development of new conservation techniques are likely to continue to be key issues in the 21st century. In the last 30 years nuclear power plants and offshore platforms required a tremendous amount of research in analysis, design, construction, and quality control. Efficient use of wind, solar, and other new forms of energy may also require considerable research. More efficient energy saving structures may also have to be designed.
7. Habitation: While demographic trends are hard to predict, if the increase in urban population and cost of building materials and labor continue, society may be forced to live in smaller areas. New approaches will have to be developed for high-population-density construction that will allow privacy, high quality of systems, and healthy environments. New materials (such as ceramics), prefabrication, and pollution control will become important topics in addition to traffic, mass transportation, and other urban issues. 8. Hazard Mitigation: The general area of hazard or disaster mitigation is acquiring increased importance in relation to large metropolitan areas. This will include not only better knowledge of the behavior of structures and lifelines subjected to winds, earthquakes, floods, fire, and other hazards but also the assessment of the vulnerability of existing facilities, appropriate planning of contingency measures, disaster relief, etc. 9. Maintenance, Monitoring, and Rehabilitation: Given the present inventory of engineering facilities, increased attention will have to be devoted to the maintenance and rehabilitation of existing structures by opposition to new construction. Research on strengthening and retrofitting of buildings is gaining momentum. Additional research is needed to design structures which are easier to monitor and maintain and to devise improved methods of nondestructive testing. 10. Physical Security: Social and political changes lead to tension in societies and between political movements. The result could be an increase in urban terrorism. Civil engineering systems will have to be designed to protect society from such actions. This will require improved knowledge of the response of structures to short duration but severe dynamic loads and integration of rescue and survival functions in the design. 11. Space and Deep-Sea Construction: The possibility of having temporary or semi permanent living quarters in space is no longer a fantasy. Civil engineers will have to develop capabilities to support all civil engineering functions in various environments and design and construct large space structures with new materials (such as ceramics) and techniques in severe environments (corrosive, large temperature variations, high speeds, etc.). While space exploration has proceeded at a fast pace, surpassing the expectations of the early science fiction writers, the exploration of the oceans is lagging behind. Yet the vast resources of the ocean beds will result in an increased interest in deep sea construction. This will again require research on currents, tides and waves, foundations on very soft soils, new materials, and new construction technology. A considerable amount of work has already been done in these areas in relation to offshore platforms but much more will be needed. One could also include design and construction of facilities in the Arctic in this area, where additional research is needed on ice forces and ice mechanics.

12. Water conservation & Soil Conservation: It need to be developed at the supplier end (Municipality) and user end by using water saving devices like faucet aerators, shower heads, pressure control valves etc. to conserve the water at grass root level for effective management The top soil need to be conserved from high wnd, rain using Gabion Dams, check wall etc

4.0 Other Priority Area for Research, Education & Applications:

4.1 The way the preceding problems will be attacked and the daily operation of civil engineering practice will be profoundly influenced by new developments and research results in a number of areas. One can mention Among these: Automation of the Analysis, Design, and Construction Processes, Computational Techniques, Experimental Analysis and Instrumentation etc. 4.2 New Materials: The last decade has seen revolutionary developments in the area of new materials (highstrength concrete, fiber reinforcement, ceramics, etc.). As pointed out earlier, these new materials and others may be essential for structures in space, in the ocean, or in other difficult environments as well as in more conventional buildings. It will be necessary, however, to study the properties and behavior of these materials under different kinds of static, cyclic and dynamic loads, and their variation with rate of loading, time, temperature, etc. This is clearly a very challenging and promising area of research which will strongly influence design and construction in the 21st century. 4.3 Stochastic Modeling: The need to account for uncertainties in the design of civil engineering structures has long been recognized. Its importance will increase, however, as civil engineers deal with new structural configurations, new materials, and new environments which are less known and with which engineers have much less experience. Reliability analyses and risk assessment studies are likely to become an integral part of all large civil engineering projects. There is a need, however, to incorporate the consideration of randomness in loads, material properties, structural geometry, dimensions, and imperfections into the basic analysis programs and procedures. Research work on stochastic finite elements and stochastic boundary elements is already underway, but much more remains to be done in the application of stochastic techniques to large systems. 4.4 Civil Engineering Systems Analysis: Developments and improvements in the area of systems analysis will have an important effect on our ability to plan large civil engineering systems and to predict their performance. There is also a need for improvement of rational decision making processes. Currently available methodologies such

as statistical inference, Bayes' theorem, or fuzzy-set theory must be investigated and supplemented with new procedures and theories.

5.0 IMMEDIATE RESEARCH NEEDS:

A number of problems with which Civil engineers may be actively involved in the future and some of the research areas which may strongly influence civil engineering practice have been discussed in general terms. In this last section some more specific and immediate research topics associated with present problems as yet unsolved or in need of more refined solutions are briefly enumerated. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Active and passive control of structures to limit deflections or excessive vibrations and to avoid stability failures. Automatic monitoring and maintenance of civil engineering systems. Behavior of composite materials accounting for their anisotropy and stability considerations. Behavior of media with uncertain properties (stochastic finite elements and boundary elements). Development of simplified algorithms for use in design practice in areas of analysis in which more rigorous but also complex and costly solutions are already available. 6. Dynamic response of structures to short duration or impact-type loads. 7. Effect of deterministic and random imperfections on stability and collapse of structures. 8. Effect of loading sequence and large pre-buckling deflections on inelastic buckling of structures. 9. Expert systems and artificial intelligence; study of the effect of compounding uncertainties and development of Rational criteria for acceptance. 10. Interaction between buckling and failure; transition to plasticity theories and fracture mechanics. 11. Interaction between structures, soils, and fluids. 12. Local buckling and failure of reinforced concrete shear and bearing walls. 13. Local and overall instability of nonmetallic shell structures. 14. Nondestructive testing of structures, soils, and pavements; system identification techniques. 15. Non stationary and multidimensional stochastic modeling of complex loads. 16. Nonlinear modeling of soils as two- or three-phase media. 17. Parallel processing of logic and numerical computations. 18. Post buckling strength of brittle or low-ductility materials. 19. Processing of uncertain or incomplete data. 20. Quality control and risk assessment. 21. Stability analysis of large structural systems subject to complex loadings. 22. Stochastic modeling of nonlinear multi-degree of freedom systems. 23. Strengthening and repair of damaged buildings. 24. Vulnerability assessment.