Sustainable Engineering For Water Supply And Planning

Introduction and Background

Discuss about the Sustainable Engineering for Water Supply and Planning.

Sustainable engineering practice is dependent upon various types of Sustainable practices that are implemented by integrating environmental, social and economical elements of the local environment.The main purpose of Sustainable engineering is to minimise the impact of environmental degradation that is caused due to various Engineering projects like that of construction and mechanical work. Sustainable Engineering projects use advanced technology that is aligned with that of the sustainable developmental plan that is aimed to minimize the harm on environment. The major factor that is associated with sustainability is the purpose of saving the natural resources for the future generations.

The main areas of focus for sustainable engineering includes,  water supply, sustainable waste management, planning to reduce environmental and social impact, Improvement of Technology for innovative projects and many more. It is essential for the environmental engineers to design and build products that can be sustainable for the future. Proper planning and quantitative tools need to be incorporated in order to design the sustainable product. Main purpose of Sustainable engineering is not only to design the sustainability tools but also incorporate advanced method in order to use those tools for practical purpose. As mentioned by Stansinoupolos et al.,(2013), the sustainable engineering tools are made to design the sustainability and use the principles of green engineering. It is also relevant to mention in the context that the use of Sustainable engineering tools is dependent upon the use of Sustainable Engineering Materials and identification of environment friendly products. The main purpose of developing sustainable engineering tools is to recover the society from the exploitation that has been done in past several years for bringing about modernization. Natural resources have been over exploited and are currently at the risk of depletion. The condition of the environment is also at stake, due to the fact that all the engineering projects have exposed harmful materials, which are currently responsible for Environmental Degradation. The adaptations of Sustainable engineering tools are highly relevant in context of the future generation, which will ensure that the global environment is protected and the future generations can lead a healthy life.

The purpose of this current report is to discuss about the application of Sustainable engineering tools that can help in the purpose of waste management. This will ensure that the harmful waste products that are obtained from all types of Engineering projects are disposed properly and not cause harm to the local environment. Following are the main objectives of sustainability.

• Focus upon sustainability factors that are responsible for the waste management.
• Focus upon the strategies, which are needed to be implemented by the future generations in order to protect the environment and cause less pressure to the ecological balance.
• special focus upon the importance and planning process that is needed in the process of dealing up with the green engineering project practice in the context of the modern days.

Objective

With all types of Engineering projects, which are involved in the disposal of various types of wastes, it is essential to have proper waste management techniques. This can ensure that minimum amount of harm is caused to the local environment. Hanes, andBakshi (2015), have mentioned that there are different kinds and categories of waste, which are exposed from all types of engineering projects. It is essential to have proper waste management techniques for each category, which will ensure proper sustainability and minimum harm to all the biological elements. Waste management techniques also include all the proper steps that are needed to manage waste and finally dispose the same, without causing any damage to people or environment.  

As per mentioned in the report of Yue, and You (2013), the waste material from all types of Engineering projects, which includes various types of toxic elements can cause direct harm to the people, who are involved in the project activities. For example the nuclear or radioactive waste materials which are produced from engineering projects are directly responsible for various types of skin and breathing problems among the human population. Long term exposure to nuclear waste, can also cause permanent damages to human health that can include exposure to carcinogenic agents. Direct disposal of the nuclear waste can also cause harm to the local environment due to the fact that most of the Biological agents are highly harmed due to the effects of the nuclear wastes.

It is important to mention in the context that with the rise in the demand of electricity energy, it is essential for the modern society to depend upon the usage of the nuclear power, which is believed to be one of the major sources of energy for the sustainable engineering projects. Long term exposure to the radioactive and nuclear wastes is reported to have caused genetic change within humans. These genetic changes causes harm to the reproductive development system thereby causing harm to the future generation. The nuclear wastes are being transferred to the genes of new born babies, which can affect their overall brain and mental development (Salman et al., 2016). Long term exposure of the nuclear waste in the local ecological system can also cause harm to the growth and development of plants and Agricultural Products. Many nations all across the globe have developed nuclear power plants in order to fulfil their growing energy demand with modern civilization. It is highly essential for the engineers to develop proper planning to deal with the nuclear waste, which will ensure minimum exposure to the biological agents.

Sustainability factors

Communities all across nations in various parts of the world need to develop Municipal solid waste management planning. Huge amount of domestic on consumer wastes that are being dumped in the local environment has the potential to deal with most of the harmful systems.Halbe et al., (2015), have mentioned the importance of the dividing the wastes into dry and wet categories that can be effective to implement proper engineering waste management techniques.

Main purpose of green engineering process reduces the harmful effects of waste materials that are exposed from all types of engineering projects. These waste materials can include all types of environmental pollutants, which can have direct effect on the health of human beings. Jay and Gerard (2015), have mentioned that one of the major elements of the practice of the green engineering includes the steps of ensuring the minimum usages of the non-hazardous substances. This is one of the initial steps which can ensure maximum amount of protection are being given to the engineering project workers during the initial period. The following step it is also necessary to ensure the minimum amount of wastages are being done. In this context it is important to mention that proper clean-up Technologies required to prevention, rather than focus upon treatment. The separation and purification operational process in engineering should have separate process, which is needed to minimise the consumption of energy. It is also essential in this context to implement maximum energy efficient Technology, which can have the ability to deal with the minimum energy consumption process thereby causing minimum energy wastages (Childers et al., 2014).  

It is also essential to use same category of product as raw materials, which can easily help to categorize the wastages. This in turn can reduce the cost of waste treatment process. It is also essential to design the raw materials, which is ideal for the technology that is being implemented in respective Engineering projects. This can reduce the total amount of wastages and thereby reduce the amount of environmental pollutants that have been exposed from the engineering project sites.Blay-Palmer (2016), has mentioned about the concepts of afterlife, which is needed in the context of dealing of selecting materials for the engineering project. This can be achieved by the use of renewable and reusable materials rather than depleting or materials having short lifespan.

The major challenges  that is associated with the implementation of green engineering practices and use of renewable materials is due to the process of lack of planning and huge expenditure that is needed in the initial stage of engineering project (Childers et al., 2015). One of the major features of the green engineering practice that can help to promote sustainable practices is to conserve complexity. This can be achieved with the purpose of increasing the efficiency and ensuring perfect design is being implemented. The stakeholders of engineering projects in many cases are not willing to invest more in engineering construction work that can make use of Sustainable materials. This mainly occurs due to lack of awareness and also lack of willingness of the stakeholders, who are mainly intended to make maximum profit and reduce the cost (Chandrappa& Das, 2014).  Nevertheless, one of the major purposes of implementing green engineering practices is to reduce the long-term cost of complex project work and also ensure that the cost of waste management procedures can be reduced significantly. 

Need for waste management in sustainable engineering development

McCormick et al.,(2014), have added the concept of 3Rs, which includes Reduced, Reuse and Recycle. It is essential for all the engineering projects to divide the waste into various categories. All types of engineering projects including construction work have various wastes that can be reused for future purpose. All the developed countries have been using this concept in order to minimise the harmful effect and implement sustainable engineering practice. This is one of the essential elements of green engineering practice, which is needed for sustainable development process. First element of this practice is to reduce the overconsumption of resources.It is essential to have proper planning, which is needed to ensure that no over consumption of resources are being made in any types of engineering projects. It is evident to mention that with less consumption of resources, there is chance that the total amount of wastages will also reduce significantly. Burden of wastages can also be reduced with proper planning methods and less consumption of natural resources (Espinosa and Walker, 2017).

Next element of green engineering practice includes reuse of the wastages. As all types of engineering waste products are classified according to their properties, it is possible to separate the waste materials that can be used for future purposes. With the reuse of unwanted materials, it is possible to reduce the extra burden of wastages that are being exposed to the environment. In many developing Nations, there are special government policies, which are aimed to encourage the use of technology and innovation for reuse of waste products. Reuse of waste product can help in the process of recycling, which is believed to be one of the fundamental processes of sustainable engineering practices. The proper planning is highly essential in the context of the implementation of encouraging the use of the green environmental policies in the engineering project work.

In the concluding note it can be said that implementation of Sustainable engineering practice is one of the essential process to ensure that the future generation society are protected from all types of harmful hazards,  which are caused due to modern human activities. It will also ensure proper economic sustainable development, which can help to ensure no over exploitation of the natural resources are being caused. This can help to maintain the ecological balance, which is necessary for the protection of all types of biological agents.

Proper waste management techniques are implemented, which is one of the essential parts of Sustainable engineering practice. It is important to mention that all types of harmful chemical wastes that are being exposed in the environment can cause various types of direct and indirect hazard to the human health. Proper waste management technique, which can be achieved by implementing green engineering practice needed to be encouraged. There are also special government policies in almost all the developed nations of the world, which are encouraged to implement the green engineering practises. 

Reference 

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Chandrappa, R., & Das, D. B. (2014).Sustainable water engineering: Theory and practice. John Wiley & Sons.

Childers, D. L., Cadenasso, M. L., Grove, J. M., Marshall, V., McGrath, B., & Pickett, S. T. (2015).An ecology for cities: A transformational nexus of design and ecology to advance climate change resilience and urban sustainability. Sustainability, 7(4), 3774-3791.

Childers, D. L., Pickett, S. T., Grove, J. M., Ogden, L., &Whitmer, A. (2014).Advancing urban sustainability theory and action: Challenges and opportunities.Landscape and Urban Planning, 125, 320-328.

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McCormick, M., Lawyer, K., Wiggins, J., Swan, C. W., Paterson, K. G., &Bielefeldt, A. R. (2014). Sustainable engineering assessment using rubric-based analysis of challenge question responses.Journal of professional issues in engineering education and practice, 141(2), C4014002.

Salman, F., Riley, D., &Javed, S. (2016, February). GreenDesigners: Gamified Ubiquitous Learning for Sustainable Engineering Design. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing Companion (pp. 397-400). ACM.

Stansinoupolos, P., Smith, M.H., Hargroves, K. and Desha, C., 2013. Whole system design: An integrated approach to sustainable engineering. Routledge.

Yue, D., & You, F. (2013). Optimization for sustainable scheduling of batch manufacturing processes under economic and environmental concerns. In Sustainable Engineering Forum 2013-Core Programming Area at the 2013 AIChE Annual Meeting: Global Challenges for Engineering a Sustainable Future. AIChE.