Briefing: Embedding transdisciplinarity in engineering approaches to infrastructure and cities

Abstract

Many of the specialisms on which infrastructure and cities rely for their effective design, construction, operation, governance, management and maintenance are underpinned by the principles of certainty, accuracy, precision and prediction. Not least of these is civil engineering. Yet infrastructures and cities are characterised by complexity and emergence. In recent decades, understandings of infrastructures and cities have begun to reflect these properties, and in particular, transdisciplinarity is promoted as critical to advancing these new understandings. However, this presents conceptual and operational challenges for civil engineering, as there is a fundamental mismatch between the certainty, accuracy and precision required by engineers and the complexity and emergence of transdisciplinary research approaches. The forms of value arising from these research approaches are themselves contentious, leaving engineers exposed to competing claims and making them ill prepared to exploit new insights to full advantage. This briefing explores these mismatches and contentions and proposes a set of four principles that underpin successful transdisciplinary research, laying the foundation for transforming research in infrastructure and cities by leveraging emergent, transdisciplinary approaches.