THE ROLE OF A CIVIL ENGINEER IN

A SMART CITY
Growing urbanization is placing pressures on cities the likes of which we have never seen
before.
There is no other profession that is in a better position to tackle the issue of how to
manage the demands of a growing population than civil engineering. From water and sanitation
to energy and transport, the way that infrastructure is designed, delivered, operated and
maintained has a critical impact on everyone’s lives.
If we get it right civil engineers can proudly claim to have made life better for people
across the globe. If we do not, society will look to others for solutions as the digital era makes it
easier for new players to step up to the plate with innovative answers to the world’s problems.
Civil engineers have throughout time, always innovated to solve the issues of the day.
New opportunities are on the horizon. ‘Smart cities’ is on the tip of every mayor’s
tongue: a vision that digital capabilities may bring value to our urban areas. Passion for this
paradigm may lead to radical digital change in the civil engineer’s habitat – and possibly, within
the profession itself.
Three digital capabilities stand out – better connectivity, a greater availability of data and
a rise in processing power. These could empower civil engineers to be more efficient and more
effective, better combating challenges in individual infrastructures, across infrastructure systems,
and throughout society as a whole.

1.Introduction
The city is the playground of the civil engineer. A myriad of connected constructions
provides the essential infrastructure citizens need to live, work and play. Without them, the cities
of today would not exist. In a future, ‘smart city’ age, civil engineers will need to solve
challenges in a more digital habitat.
Civil engineering deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical
and natural built environment, in and between urban areas. Civil engineers improve and maintain
this environment to enhance the quality of life for present and future generations 1 . In essence,
civil constructions are required for everything from the provision of food and water, to effective
sanitation, to reliable transport.
Through their work, civil engineers have a key role in solving a wide variety of
challenges in the built environment, from the smallest infrastructure faults to global resource
shortages. These challenges are not confined to the scale of individual pieces of infrastructure,
but also span the systems these infrastructures collectively form, and in the wider society that
depends on them.

2. What are smart cities?

A smart city is an urban area that uses different types of electronic Internet of things
(IoT) sensors to collect data and then use insights gained from that data to manage assets,
resources and services efficiently, in return using that data to better improve the operations
across the city. This includes data collected from citizens, devices, buildings and assets that is
processed and analyzed to monitor and manage traffic and transportation systems, power plants,
utilities, water supply networks, waste management, crime detection, information systems,
schools, libraries, hospitals, and other community services.
The smart city concept integrates information and communication technology (ICT), and
various physical devices connected to the IoT network to optimize the efficiency of city
operations and services and connect to citizens. Smart city technology allows city officials to
interact directly with both community and city infrastructure and to monitor what is happening in
the city and how the city is evolving. ICT is used to enhance quality, performance and
interactivity of urban services, to reduce costs and resource consumption and to increase contact
between citizens and government. Smart city applications are developed to manage urban flows
and allow for real-time responses. A smart city may therefore be more prepared to respond to
challenges than one with a simple "transactional" relationship with its citizens. Yet, the term
itself remains unclear to its specifics and therefore, open to many interpretations.
Major technological, economic and environmental changes have generated increased
interest in smart cities, including climate change, economic restructuring, coronavirus, the move
to online retail and entertainment, ageing populations, urban population growth and pressures
on public finances.

3. The roles of civil engineers in a smart city

Smart Building: The most important concentration of any construction is building.
Improvement is being done as per the necessities over the time. The features like lightning,
ventilation, heating, air conditioning, and security can be selected separately. The future of
building can be predicted in functional integrated and dynamic way. The vision is
successfully implemented only when the energy is minimized, boot support to electrical grid
and accessing the impacts in the environment. The serviceability of the building is
considered on the basis of good sanitation, thermal comfortableness, good quality of air,
security system etc. With minimum possible expenditures. Smart buildings use ICT to
optimize the performance of total building.
 Smart Infrastructure: Infrastructure is the term used for the underlying physical and
organizational structures and facilities that support city systems and keep a city functioning.
It includes roads, buildings, electricity grids and communication networks. In many countries
the building of infrastructure is a centralized, governmental activity that aims to solve one
issue at a time, such as a network for water supply. Future infrastructure designs will gain
the additional remit of anticipating long term, global phenomena. City infrastructures will
need to withstand pressures such as extra stress on the electricity grid resulting from more
homes having solar panels, and increasing incidents of extreme weather resulting from
climate change such as tornadoes and storm surges.

Smart Transportation: It advocates more efficient transportation systems and

promotes new social attitudes towards vehicle usage, ensuring that citizens have access to
local and public transportation, and that ICT again is integrated to increase efficiency. Smart
cities seek to increase how efficiently people, goods, and vehicles are transported in an
urban environment.

4. Conclusion
Digital innovation clearly demonstrates great potential to the civil engineering profession;
possible benefits manifest themselves across two opportunity types and spanning 3 challenge
levels.
In reality, injecting hard infrastructure alone does not deliver this. Just as we have
suggested that digital innovation should not be simply undertaking existing processes faster and
cheaper, we do not think that civil engineering can resolve existing difficulties simply by
investing more heavily in the innovation approach used to date.
Currently, Civil engineering captures only a small fraction of digital innovation’s
potential, ignoring the benefits of effectiveness, the concept of societal outcomes or long-term
perspectives. The barriers around improving are not technical, but focus around soft
infrastructure. Three stand out to us as powerful enablers of change commercial practices;
governance and process; and human capital.
Civil engineering needs to take a bolder, more proactive role in shaping its future if it is
to succeed in a smart city age. The profession needs to come together to achieve digital
solidarity. Civil engineers should transition from a view of isolated infrastructure outputs to
industry-wide societal outcomes. This is essential to maintaining competitiveness and purpose in
the future’s markets; this is essential for addressing the societal challenges the profession was
founded out to achieve.
5. References
 Institution of Civil engineers, https://www.ice.org.uk/,
 Arup, RIBA, “Designing with data: Shaping our future cities,” Arup, London, 2015
 Alawadhi, S., Aldama-Nalda, A., Chourabi, H., Gil-Garcia, J.
R., Leung, S., Mellouli, S., Walker, S. (2012). Building understanding of smart city
initiatives.
 Hall, P. (2000). Creative cities and economic development.