Earth Systems Engineering

The inability to anticipate impacts and future risks of a complex problem is a challenge integral to the engineering process. Engineering's increasing capacity to provide powerful solutions to multifaceted problems can result unintended and undesirable consequences equal to or greater than the original problem. This situation is particularly troubling when modern engineering systems have the power to affect the environment broadly and far into the future.

Recognizing that many engineering decisions cannot be made independent of the surrounding natural and human-made systems, the NAE is leading the development of a new approach to those decisions. Earth Systems Engineering (ESE) brings together quantitative and qualitative tools from engineering and the physical and social sciences; its roots are in industrial ecology, environmental science, and engineering systems. ESE’s goal is better understanding of the challenges posed by complex, nonlinear systems of global importance — notably environmental systems — and development of tools that respond effectively to those challenges.

Developing optimal solutions to multifaceted challenges — such as restoring the Everglades ecosystem or understanding the impact of human activity on global climate — often demands new techniques to identify, collect, and interpret information. Thus ESE expands the traditional engineering approach, where solutions are devised after a review of technical options and predictions of performance, economic impact, risk, and effect on other engineering systems. In contrast, ESE requires evaluation of interactions with nonengineered systems; options for nontechnical solutions; and predictions for effects on nonlinearly link systems with diverse customers and multiple scales of impact. It demands that we determine whether assumptions made throughout the engineering process are still valid when dealing with complex, global systems. And it asks that we consider how our professional ethics should evolve as the nature of engineering’s influence on society and the environment changes.

The quality of our engineering directly affects the quality of society and the lives of future generations. And it is increasingly clear that the health of the environment and our society depends on engineers more adeptly using the ever-increasing power of engineering within complex systems. Given these powerful implications, the NAE is the logical organization to foster development of ESE and to recommend strategies for its use to benefit society. In the near term, the Academy’s ESE program will initiate studies on specific topics — such as water supply or energy cost issues — and foster dialogues among experts in ESE’s constituent disciplines.

Earth Systems Engineering (ESE) is an area of inquiry for the NAE, stemming from the concepts of geoengineering, or human activity at the level of geological systems.

The NAE is exploring the concept that ESE can become a means to understand the complex interactions between natural and human-made systems, to predict and monitor more accurately the ecological impact of engineered systems, and to devise engineered systems for the mutual benefit of natural and human-made systems.

Although there is little current literature on geoengineering and ESE, current expertise indicates that human interventions based on technically sound and ethically wise decisions may be not only desirable, but also feasible. The NAE is now conducting exploratory study to examine this potential.

The NAE sponsored a technical symposium on Earth System Engineering in October, 2000. Proceedings from this symposium are available from the National Academies Press.   Read or purchase the report.