Environmental Sciences and Engineering

专业详情

Humankind is faced with a multitude of major environmental challenges: climate change, resource scarcity, pollution, human population growth and loss of biodiversity. While it is true that finding and implementing the right solutions to these problems will depend on human, economic and social factors, they will still vitally need to be underpinned by scientific and technological progress.

Gaining expertise in and understanding technology are crucial for environmental action. Biotechnologies also play a major role in the treatment of waste water, re-using solid waste, or remediating polluted soil. Often treated with suspicion, bacteria and fungi can also prove to be invaluable allies if they can be channeled for a specific purpose. The role of environmental engineers is to analyze the nature of the pollution, to set out the appropriate treatment, then to ensure the follow-up and effectiveness of its implementation.

Environmental engineering must also participate in responsibly using the natural resources of water, soil, and air. Environmental engineers have to assess these resources and manage them within the framework of fragile ecosystems which have complex and unpredictable behavior. They succeed in this particularly through rigorously using data from onsite measurements or from models.

These experts are also involved in natural risk assessment. Here, as well, their approach involves an increasing use of environmental monitoring, a discipline that is experiencing a boom allowing an ever-more exhaustive collection of the primary parameters necessary for following and modeling environmental phenomena.