CSEI shapes its 2030 vision

The 2030 vision of the Centre is to bring Systems Engineering and Innovation to Civil Infrastructure through changing how cross-sector infrastructure challenges are addressed in an integrated way using principles of systems engineering to maximise resilience, safety and sustainability in an increasingly complex world.

The preparation for CSEI’s 10 years celebration event has led to multiple discussions about the future of the Centre. These are in our Research Agenda on Systems Approaches in Infrastructure forthcoming in the Journal of Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems.

These discussions were inspired by developing themes for the event, through which we have summarised the first 10 years of the Centre’s work and started creating the future vision. We want to better understand the natural and societal impacts of infrastructure interventions under uncertainty. This requires a change in current approaches to infrastructure systems engineering: starting from the natural environment and its resources, encompassing societal use of infrastructure and the supporting infrastructure assets and services.

In the coming years, we see the Centre as a platform for discussing and creating knowledge to support this new thinking by developing novel modelling methods and forms of model integration and multi-criteria indicators for complex infrastructure problems that go beyond boundaries of individual infrastructure systems. We see the work relevant for both academic community and wide range of industry and policy application that are working on transition pathways towards fair, safe and sustainable society.

To support this vision, we are expanding our core team. The CSEI is delighted to welcome Dr Ana Mijic in her new appointment as Co-Director at the Centre for Systems Engineering and Innovation. Dr Ana Mijic will be leading CSEI with fellow Co-Director Professor Jennifer Whyte. Their co-leadership will be supported by Prof Washington Ochieng, who is appointed an Executive Director and Prof David Fisk, in his role of a Founding Director of the Centre.

Please join us in wishing Ana and Washington congratulations on their new appointments.