COVID-19 Implications for Research and Education on Engineered Structures and Services

Abstract

While there may be a tendency to characterize COVID-19 as exclusively a public health issue, engineered structures and services have both mitigated and exacerbated the pandemic’s march around the globe, raising questions about the role of engineering in controlling pandemics. Any attempts to answer these questions implicate not only the tools, techniques and problems which we define as within the province of engineering, but also the means by which we arrive at this definition. As described here—in settings ranging from nursing homes to prisons to Brazilian favelas—the COVID-19 crisis has upended a number of foundational notions associated with the practice of hazard mitigation through the design and operation of engineered structures and services. It has revealed the need to examine the conditions and assumptions that characterize the models we construct and the data we collect. We do so through a number of case studies collected during the COVID-19 crisis, leading to implications for the conduct of research and education to support not only further advances in our field but to improved prospects for improved mitigation of pandemics and other hazards.

Keywords

• covid-19
• systems engineering
• civil engineering
• hazard mitigation
• natural hazards policy