Title

Peace engineering in practice: A case study at the University of New Mexico

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2-2021

Abstract

This article presents an overview of Peace Engineering activities at the University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Engineering (SOE) and Health Sciences Center (HSC). In 2018, UNM's SOE hosted the joint summit of the World Engineering Education Forum and Global Engineering Deans Council. The theme, “Peace Engineering,” focused on science and engineering-based solutions to the world's grand challenges. Outcomes of this first global conference on Peace Engineering include creating new academic programs and opening a wide new area for education, research and innovation addressing climate change, water, health care, food security, ethics, transparency, infrastructure resilience, sustainability, social equity and diversity. UNM Peace Engineering-related activities include the Ibero–American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC), the Sustainable Water Resources Grand Challenge associated with the Center for Water and the Environment (CWE), the Microgrid Systems Laboratory and Smart City Initiative, the Center for Engineered Resilience and Ecological Sustainability, Project ECHO, the WHY (What do engineers do? How the heck do you do that? WhY am I taking this course?) Lab the Global Peace Laboratories Network, Peace Engineering minor, webinars and case studies. UNM is collaborating with national laboratories, industry, and academia globally. Engineers must understand, measure, and predict the intended and unintended consequences of their work and products. We summarize a complex systems approach to measure positive and negative peace interactions and provide a path to analytic and predictive tools that link engineering abstraction to real-life world experiences.

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