at his heart engineering is about
solving problems and for better or worse
the world won't have a shortage of those
anytime soon
throughout this series we've covered
many of the areas where these challenges
lie and how engineers are making their
mark but we've only just skimmed the
surface while we couldn't get to them
all one thing is certain the future
landscape of engineering will be very
different from what we see today
from the tiny to the large we've seen
engineering in action to deliver drugs
build bridges and shore up skyscrapers
in general the kinds of problems that
engineers solve depend on what we want
and need farms factory cities and homes
all rely on energy production civil
infrastructure and communication
networks for their basic functions
society will continue to need those in
some form in the future which is why a
lot of focus is put into these fields of
engineering but new engineering
specialties are also popping up all the
time in the last decade the demand for
smart phones has driven huge
developments in Electrical and Computer
Engineering the industry is working on
improving the designs of components like
processes and finding cheaper ways of
producing them in other words economic
factors can play a big role in what
fields engineers end up working in and
what sorts of jobs are available to them
but in the 21st century there are
challenges facing the world that go
beyond economics with implications for
our very existence the environment is
changing more radically than ever there
are entirely new threats to our
infrastructure healthcare and sanitation
have the potential to save hundreds of
millions of lives
although engineering has improved the
average quality of life to the best it's
ever been big challenges like these need
to be addressed if Humanity is going to
keep thriving to outline some of these
problems the US National Academy of
Engineering or nae has consulted with
engineers scientists and technologists
to create a set of Grand Challenges for
engineers in the 21st century these
goals address some of the most essential
global issues in both big and small ways
broadly speaking they focus on
sustainability security health in
general quality of life it all starts
with sustainability or making sure our
planet stays a place where we can live
to heal the environment and keep
humanity safe we need to engineer a
future that looks very different from
our past to prevent further damage from
the burning of fossil fuels we need to
develop cleaner methods for energy
production engineers are already working
to make solar panels more efficient and
investigate the possibility of power
plants that use nuclear fusion but
producing power isn't the only way we're
warming the planet
what an agriculture uses lots of
artificial fertilizers to increase food
production
unfortunately only some gets absorbed
into living things like crops much of
the rest escapes to the atmosphere as
nitrogen oxide there are acts as a
greenhouse gas
in heats and deepening the effects of
climate change were still some returns
to earth in the form of acid rain to
address these problems engineers need to
find ways of stopping nitrogen from
leaking out of the food production
process stopping the release of nitrogen
oxide is essential for managing the
nitrogen cycle that supports the earth's
ecosystem and that may mean designing
new methods of applying fertilizer or
processing organic waste into more
environmentally friendly alternatives
but it's too late to just change what we
do in the future to fix the warming
planet we need to reverse the effects of
greenhouse gases that's the goal behind
carbon sequestration which aims to take
carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and
store it safely away the good news is
sequestration is already possible there
are chemical reactions for capturing co2
by the kind used to add fizz to soda a
huge challenge is to scale up that
technology to remove billions of tons of
it from the atmosphere in a way that's
economically viable a good start would
be capturing carbon dioxide as its
released from fossil fuel based energy
plants the smokestacks in coal powered
plants could be altered to absorb
greenhouse gases at the source and once
we can prevent its release or take it
out of the atmosphere we'll need a way
to store that co2 engineers are working
on finding places like deep within
porous rock formations where all that
carbon could be put away while
preventing environmental ruin is a huge
task there are other risks Engineers
need to plan for in the future
while civil engineering has provided a
lot of infrastructure needed to support
our daily lives not enough work has gone
into maintaining it all structures and
outdated transportation systems are in
need of modernization to make them safer
and more reliable as part of these
efforts engineers in the UK are sending
electromagnetic waves through the ground
to locate buried objects like pipes and
cables that are part of the current
communication and plumbing networks
this will allow engineers to map them
out and improve waste treatment
facilities and telephone networks making
those systems more resilient against
potential catastrophes
sadly the risk posed to infrastructure
aren't just because of negligence as the
world becomes more connected systems
like power grids are increasingly
coordinated using networks of computers
unfortunately that makes them more
vulnerable to attacks from hackers in
2015 hackers managed to disrupt the
power grid in Ukraine temporarily
cutting off the supply of electricity to
230,000
residents for several hours if a tax
like this continue to escalate in scale
they could threaten important services
like hospitals and firefighters to
prevent hackers from attacking critical
infrastructure computer engineers are
developing solutions to ensure that only
trusted operators can access the systems
that control them that involves
developing more secure software and even
implementing new hardware like
fingerprint scanners to make sure only a
few designated people can make changes
they can also organize vulnerable
computer systems to operate on networks
that are entirely disconnected from the
internet so hackers have a harder time
accessing them in the first place so big
threats to infrastructure aren't just
restricted to cyberspace although
nuclear weapons haven't been used in
warfare since World War two there's
always the chance that a malicious group
could turn stolen nuclear material into
an improvised bomb to prevent this
engineers are developing ways to monitor
and track the radioactive elements used
in places like energy plants hospitals
and research facilities for example
devices could be designed that measured
the radioactivity near nuclear reactors
giving an indication of the amount of
material inside if that level drops
suddenly without explanation it could
alert investigators that a theft has
occurred now this all kind of sounds
like the future of engineering is just
preventing terrible things from
happening but the good news is that
engineering is also an active positive
force for improving lives because of the
incredible pace at which technology is
advanced engineering can make huge
strides in the fields of Health and
sanitation we saw a ways to provide
better access to clean water in the
context of engineering design which is
vital for sanitation and preventing the
outbreak of disease but there are lots
of ways engineers could help treat
diseases too the tools of genetic
engineering for example give us new ways
to create medicines such as specially
designed enzymes that produce cancer
jobs more efficiently some recent
advances like CRISPR might even allow
doctors to treat patients based on their
DNA and eliminate certain diseases
entirely and as we saw with bio devices
new hardware has being developed to work
within the body for medical diagnosis
and monitoring the data that those
devices collect like blood pressure and
heart rate could be used to alert
doctors immediately when something goes
wrong grouped across many patients this
data could also be used to investigate
and predict healthcare trends fields
called health informatics engineers will
play an enormous role in designing the
systems
collect transmit and even analyze that
data as well as personalizing healthcare
engineering can develop other kinds of
tools that are tailored to individuals
like those used in education many common
resources including videos like this one
and aims at a broad audience in the
future though resources could be
designed to change the style and depth
of information they provide based on an
individual students strengths and
preferences imagine an online textbook
that could automatically elaborate on
topics you didn't get the first time
around or digital flashcards that adapt
to test you on the things you forget
most often new hardware like virtual or
augmented reality headsets could even
provide simulated environments for
students to learn and experimenting
software engineers will be key to
bringing these sorts of tools into
classrooms and homes of course similar
technologies could be applied to every
aspect of our lives to allow our
thoughts and personalities to influence
our environments but to do that we need
to understand the brain a lot better
than we do now understanding the human
brain is one of the biggest scientific
challenges there is doing so would allow
us to develop new medical and
psychiatric treatments modeling computer
systems on the design of the human brain
could also give us entirely new ways of
solving problems you've probably heard
of the progress being made and feels
like artificial intelligence the goal is
to construct systems with
problem-solving capabilities similar to
the kind humans have such as driving
cars or recognising tumors and x-ray
scans so far we can only crudely mimic
how brain cells are connected
understanding how the brain works more
completely could help us replicate some
of its remarkable abilities on this run
engineers are developing new hardware to
assist in making scientific discoveries
like infrared sensors that measure brain
activity this helps us to understand how
physical changes like blood flow and
electrical impulses correspond to the
act of thinking and determining that
could help us better model individual
parts of the brain and improve our
efforts that artificial intelligence
from brains to biofuels it's clear
they're engineers have lots of ways to
impact the future despite the challenges
laid out by the nae the truth is that
engineering rarely goes the way we
predict few people would have thought
that less than seventy years would
separate the flight of the first
my first steps on the moon the
development of technology and the
challenges that come with it are still
big questions on the horizon but what we
can say is that whatever the future
holds the problem solving skills and
fundamental ideas provided by
engineering will put you in a good spot
to take a crack at them yourself
because that's really what engineering
is all about using bright ideas to
tackle big challenges and we hope this
series has put you on the path to do
just that crash course engineering is
produced in association with PBS Digital
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course is the complexity production and
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Cheryl C Kinney studio with the help of
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