ABSTRACT

Over the last two decades, several universities have sought to revive efforts to infuse systems engineering perspectives into their traditional civil engineering curricula. They have done this by including systems engineering concepts in their traditional courses, or by establishing new undergraduate courses that specifically address the principles of systems engineering in the civil engineering context. This presentation describes a course titled “Introduction to Civil Engineering Systems” that was introduced in fall 2003 as a required course in the undergraduate curriculum at Purdue University’s School of Civil Engineering. The course encourages students to view civil infrastructure as a system and to study the development of these systems from three perspectives: the phases of development, the analytical tasks of the civil engineer at each phase, and the analytical tools needed by the civil engineer to carry out the analytical tasks. This presentation discusses the motivation for the course, course objectives and resources, course content, and instruction delivery mechanisms. The presentation also discusses the lessons learned over the 18 years since the course was established. The course satisfies a significant section of current ABET requirements and American Society of Civil Engineers’ rubrics for undergraduate civil engineering education.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Samuel Labi (PhD, Purdue 2001) is a professor of transportation and infrastructure systems engineering at Purdue University’s Lyles School of Civil Engineering, director of the Next-generation Transportation Systems Center (NEXTRANS), and associate director of the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT). He is an associate editor of Computer Aided Civil & Infrastructure Engineering journal, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, and Journal of Infrastructure Systems. Dr. Labi is author of Introduction to Civil Engineering Systems (Wiley) and co-author of Transportation Decision Making (Wiley). He has taught courses at Purdue and MIT, and short courses at Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech on project management and infrastructure systems. He is the chair of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)’s Economics & Finance committee and secretary of TRB’s committee on asset management. Also, he is a member of ASCE and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Dr. Labi’s research clients include the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies, and the World Bank. His awards include TRB’s Mickle Award in 2019 for best paper in maintenance and operations, ASCE’s Frank Masters Award in 2014 for outstanding and innovative work in advancing the area of transportation systems, ASTM’s Mather Award in 2007 for best paper in concrete materials, and TRB’s Woods Prize in 2008 for outstanding journal paper in design and construction.