On National Engineer's Day, we pay tribute to the men and women who responsibly carry out the great task of building towns and cities, filling our society with progress and quality. Happy Engineer's Day!.
SANTO DOMINGO – The Dominican Republic celebrates “National Engineer’s Day” today. The Royal Spanish Academy defines engineering as the body of knowledge oriented towards the invention and use of techniques for harnessing natural resources or for industrial activity.
Reviewing different literature reveals a variety of engineering types, some of which place the number of specialties in this profession at up to 50, where new specialties are emerging every day with the advancement of technology and science.
Civil engineering, which we will be discussing, encompasses a broad area of knowledge and is closely linked to the development of cities, and therefore, to the progress of societies. We often categorize a country's cities as metropolises to describe the modernity of their infrastructure, roads, and urban planning, which gives us an idea of the level of well-being or high quality of life of their citizens.
Civil engineering is the engineering of innovation in cities; it defines their design and is therefore the profession of the present and the future.
Their practices may have begun between 4000 and 2000 BC in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia when humans began to abandon nomadic existence, creating the need for shelter.
Civil engineering has a strong organizational component that achieves its application in the management of the urban environment, achieving a notable harmony between man and nature, not only in relation to construction, but also to maintenance, control and planning of human life in the environment designed from this same perspective.
This includes territorial organization plans such as disaster prevention, traffic and transport control, water resource management, public services, waste treatment and all those activities that guarantee the well-being of humanity that develops its life on the civil works built and operated by engineers.
“The very essence of Civil Engineering is centered on the responsibility of conceiving and materializing infrastructure works, indispensable for the provision of public services: communications and transport, water for cities, industries and agriculture; energy, building for housing, commerce, industry, health, education and tourism; and in recent decades concerned and occupied with the preservation of the environment.”.
Its origin
The first engineers were architects, who built walls to protect cities and the first buildings, for which they used some engineering skills.
The development of engineering passed from culture to culture, including Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Eastern and European, until what it is now in our time.
Before the Industrial Revolution (18th-19th centuries), civil engineering as a discipline did not exist. Builders inherited their knowledge, and architects used fine art techniques in their constructions.
The use of low-strength masonry in monumental and sculptural proportions prevailed. Leonardo da Vinci, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton were developing the foundations of engineering sciences, and in 1747, the Royal School of Bridges and Roads of Paris was created, and the term "Civil Engineering" emerged to differentiate infrastructure works from military constructions.
With the invention of reinforced concrete to improve the construction of houses (William Wilkinson, 1854) and the large-scale production of steel (Henry Bessmer, 1856), during the Second Industrial Revolution (1850-1914), the transformation of urban buildings began and construction acquired an industrial character.
Engineers like Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) are renowned for breaking with tradition by combining elegance with innovation, using new technologies (low corrosion steel) with efficient designs that optimize the size and shape of structural elements.
Civil engineering is everywhere and has changed the way we live. We see this clearly in self-sustaining buildings, where the aim is to use resources more efficiently, optimizing savings and investment processes, which represents a world of difference compared to the way of life of early humans.
Today, this profession faces challenges that past generations could barely imagine. Today, it is a priority to minimize the impact on ecosystems, take advantage of resources through smarter use, improve energy efficiency, and innovate in the development of sustainable alternative materials.
According to the analysis of the global outlook for civil engineering in 2025, carried out by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the world will be very different from today's; the population will increase and remain on the move, constantly relocating from one place to another, which will intensify the need to create sustainability in the face of the demand for energy, drinking water, transportation, and infrastructure.
It is not possible to conceive of societies without the helping hand of a civil engineer who, with his infrastructures and buildings, invade the walls, streets and communities of enormous and modern works.
Sources: CATDIC
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