Book Description

The future presents society with enormous challenges on many fronts, such as energy, infrastructures in urban settings, mass migrations, mobility, climate, healthcare for an aging population, social security and safety. In the coming decennia, leaps in scientific discovery and innovations will be necessary in social, political, economic and technological fields. Technology, the domain of engineers and engineering scientists, will be an essential component in making such innovations possible. Engineering is the social practice of conceiving, designing, implementing, producing and sustaining complex technological products, processes or systems. The complexity is often caused by the behaviour of the system development that changes with time that cannot be predicted in advance from its constitutive parts. This is especially true when human decisions play a key role in solving the problem. Solving complex systems requires a solid foundation in mathematics and the natural sciences, and an understanding of human nature. Therefore, the skills of the future engineers must extend over an array of fields. The book was born from the "Introduction to Engineering" courses given by the author in various universities. At that time the author was unable to find one text book, that covered all the subjects of the course. The book claims to fulfil this gap.