The Moral Responsibilities of Civil Engineers in the Age of Pandemic
Antonio Roman Campos
NONFICTION
Introduction
It is an indisputable fact that the current, global coronavirus pandemic has had significant impacts on human lives and livelihoods. While cases and mortalities resulting from COVID-19 continue to rise worldwide, the impacts of the pandemic have also been “superimposed on unresolved tensions between people and technology, between people and the planet, and between the haves and have-nots” [1]. Because of this, the pandemic has disproportionately impacted particular countries, groups, cohorts, and ethnicities [2]. Thus, it is obvious that all professionals have an ethical responsibility to recognize virus-associated problems and take steps to reduce the spread of COVID-19, while simultaneously showing solidarity with those who have been most negatively impacted by the outbreak. What is less clear, however, is what responsibilities civil engineers—specifically—possess in the struggle to curtail and, ultimately, end the pandemic.
This paper argues that members of the civil engineering profession, beyond merely following prescribed virus mandates, also have a definite, ethical responsibility to take a leadership position in the fight to stop the spread of COVID-19. Furthermore, this report demonstrates that, although they do not specifically operate in the healthcare industry, civil engineers are particularly well suited to combat the coronavirus pandemic via a three-prong approach. First, civil engineers possess the requisite technical knowledge needed to improve current logistical systems that can help to curtail virus cases. Second, civil engineers can implement unique and creative solutions to help oppose the virus or mitigate its consequences for society. Third, civil engineers can innovate new and improved measures for incorporating social justice and environmental justice into their works, thereby simultaneously lessening socioeconomic rifts exacerbated by the pandemic and improving chances for equality in post-virus sociopolitical landscapes.
Proven coronavirus transmission prevention tactics, including social distancing, testing, and mask wearing, are crucial to slowing the spread of COVID-19. However, “while amateurs talk tactics, professionals discuss logistics,” since a long-term solution to the current crisis must ultimately come from the orchestrated implementation of a physical virus solution [3]. Thus, it is expected that “much of the conversation [concerning a definitive end of the pandemic] will come back to engineering, which has historically advanced public health far more than medical care has” [3]. This is because many of the systems associated with overcoming disease are also closely connected with civil engineering and infrastructural projects, including “sanitation, water supply, electrification, refrigeration, highways, transportation safety, body scanning, and mass production” systems [3]. Because both patients and equipment, including vaccines and PPE[1], must effectively be stored, moved, and maintained, many civil engineering jobs are connected to nationwide COVID-19 solutions, which require “engineering logistics” and “flexible supply chains” for successful roll-out [3].
Moreover, while COVID-19 may be “novel” in many ways, there is nothing unprecedented about engineers’ involvement in organizing logistics against disease [3]. In previous eras, civil engineers were lauded as “pioneers of our civilization” for their abilities to move equipment efficiently, and to adapt seamlessly to sudden global developments [4]. During the worldwide Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, for example, civil engineers like the Danish inventor Agner Krarup Erlang were extolled for their improvements to telecommunication and transportation systems, which allowed for rapid news dissemination and faster medical services [3]. Likewise, more recently, transportation engineers have sought faster ways to distribute vaccines and medical equipment “at a time when hospitals are furloughing staff, reducing salaries… and screaming for PPE” [5]. Thus, “engineering systems” have played “vital” roles in keeping medical systems afloat [3] and able to handle the influx of new COVID-19 patients with the help of improved “delivery times… and telemedicine” [5].
Implementing Creative Solutions
Notwithstanding the fact that globalized issues, like the current pandemic, “bring additional challenges… to civil engineers, … creative people and true leaders of [the] profession have always used [such] challenges to change and adapt to new demands, consequently converting adversities into advantages” [4]. Because of this need for new ideas and adaptations, civil engineers have an ethical responsibility to take considered risks and be creative in their confrontation of the COVID-19 pandemic. This way, new solutions to the rapidly-evolving situation can be ascertained, society can continue to function effectively during the outbreak, and worldwide communities can work on returning to normalcy.
In order to respond to the pandemic with novel solutions and creative, new ideas, in addition to their traditionally analytical, “factual, and quantitative” knowledge, civil engineers must also be willing to develop “out-of-the-box solutions” for fluctuating global problems that adequately serve a constantly-changing world on both local and international levels [4]. Thus, civil engineers do not merely have a responsibility to create effective systems and propagate them throughout the world. Instead, they must also be willing to be attentive to new, local ideas and research, even from traditionally marginalized sources [2], in order to ensure that they have the very best designs for combating the virus. Therefore, instead of acting like analytical engines or impersonal data-mongers, civil engineers must seek to implement human elements and “qualitative knowledge” into their work, paying attention to “creativity, computing, and globalization” [4]. In this way, engineers can use “balanced paradigms,” “both quantitative and qualitative data,” and “the present challenges, to change and adapt [their] profession to meet new demands,” [4].
Additionally, “since the [COVID-19] crisis has multiple, interconnected dimensions, a [similarly] systematic approach—rather than a sector-by-sector sequential approach—is essential” to overcoming the pandemic [1]. Consequently, civil engineers are ethically required to reach out and work with other professionals as they come up with creative, new ideas. Specifically, companies should take advantage of long-distance attendance and virtual communication in order to reach out to other organizations, including universities and hospitals, so that they can hear alternative opinions prior to implementing proposed measures, such as reevaluating construction priorities for new buildings or redirecting traffic flow to allow for lines of cars at testing and vaccine centers.
Overall, by being more creative and always communicating with others, “the twenty-first century civil engineer [should style himself] as a reincarnation of the [global] Renaissance man, or uomo universale… with a focus on creative tools” and broad experiences [4]. In this way, a “wave of innovation” can be “scaled up to support the response [to the virus] on multiple fronts,” thereby integrating engineering, medical, political, and social skills to effect a long-term solution to the current COVID-19 crisis [1].
Innovating Social and Environmental Justice
Although the successful distribution of a vaccine to the coronavirus may feel like the exclusive priority today, it is also important for people—and civil engineers specifically—to remember that there are still other issues of ethical and moral weight, even in this time of pandemic. While the more “quantitative” and “pragmatic skills” of civil engineers [4] tend to focus upon numerical assessments of the challenging COVID-19 situation, it is important to consider not only the economic and medical angles of the virus, but also the wide-ranging social and environmental issues that it has magnified. Therefore, one crucial objective of current engineering designs must be social justice and the “promotion [of] inclusive human development in the coming years and for future generations” [1]. In other words, social equity issues must be considered alongside logistical engineering tasks like designing transportation systems and urban plans to meet vaccine goals. Because a “coherent multidimensional approach to the pandemic” is necessary to support the members of ethnic and economic minorities’ communities that have been particularly impacted by the virus, any attempts at “unilateral, macroeconomic policies are doomed to fail” at both political and engineering levels.
To further support the members of minority and impoverished neighborhoods that have been disproportionately harmed by the pandemic, engineers and engineering corporations must make liberal use of the assets that they possess and the skills that they have developed in order to counter systemic injustices exacerbated by the COVID-19 situation. Thus, urban planners and metropolitan engineers must focus economic revitalization efforts on those neighborhoods that have been most impacted by COVID-19. Transportation engineers must modify streetscapes to help direct traffic towards those businesses that have been most harmed to help them recuperate faster. Large engineering corporations with enough money to do so should dedicate a certain amount of their revenues to the support of local communities, especially since the engineering profession has been relatively unharmed by the pandemic as compared to, for example, the restaurant, travel, and personal service industries.
In addition to social justice, another important topic that has often taken back seat to the coronavirus pandemic is environmental justice, which includes the development of more sustainable and ecologically-friendly practices in civil engineering. According to the United Nations’ 2020 Human Development Perspectives, environmental concerns have continued to be at the forefront of many minds throughout the COVID-19 crisis, however governmental and industrial support for environmental measures has slackened since the beginning of 2020 because the pandemic presented a bigger perceived threat to human health than pollution [1]. This finding was based upon the IPSOS Earth Day Report [6], “a recent survey conducted in 14 countries [which] found that 71 percent of adults globally consider that climate change is as serious a crisis as COVID-19, with two thirds supporting government actions to prioritize climate change during the recovery” period from the pandemic [1,6]. Thus, it appears that “the thirst for renewable energy and [sustainable engineering] has only been intensified by the coronavirus pandemic,” and human concerns about the virus have not entirely superseded or replaced ecological reform measures in the public mind.
This data clearly indicates the need for civil engineers to continue to focus upon sustainable, environmental, and ecological strategies even as they work to address particular aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. Specifically, civil engineers who work in the energy sector should strive to “actively shape local economy and promote renewable” energy measures because they, like the public at large, should remain ethically bound to environmental sustainability regardless of other widespread issues, like contagion [7]. Hopefully, “renewables [will continue] to post growth in demand,” even in a post-COVID-19 world, “driven by low operating costs, larger installed capacity, and priority dispatch” [7]. Overall, even as they work to focus on human health and safety during the pandemic, civil and environmental engineers cannot afford to forget about social and ecological issues as well. Both present needs for safety and future needs for clean air and resources must be considered, since civil engineers, as leaders of the present and the future, have moral responsibilities to support both.
Conclusion
Although questions of integrity and ethics are by no means new to the field of civil engineering [8], the current COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on ethical questions concerning engineering practices and priorities in a way that was, perhaps, never considered in the American Society of Civil Engineering’s original, 1913 “code of ethics” [8]. Indeed, many modern questions of engineering ethics do not pit engineers against one another, nor do they suggest malintents of clients or professionals [8]. Instead, they demonstrate both the capabilities and the responsibilities of engineers in a variety of unprecedented ways.
Day to day, modern civil engineers must weigh the concerns of the present global health situation with the environmental future of the world. They must make affirmative decisions to promote social justice and community wellness. They must continue to fulfill the obligations of their important vocations as they simultaneously look out for the welfare and safety of their families and communities.
As designers and constructors of the humanmade environment that surrounds them, civil engineers have always built the world and molded the future. Now, they must continue to do so even in the midst of a worldwide health crisis, which may shape the future of their industry and their society for decades to come.
Since engineers have the knowledge, creativity, and mentality necessary to help combat the pandemic and make a difference, they surely must fulfill their moral obligations to do so by both supporting and improving society through their work.
References
[1] Conceição, P., Hall, J., Jahic, A., Kovacevic, M., Nayyar, S., Ortubia, A., Pavez, F., Rivera, C., and Tapia, H. (2020). COVID-19 and Human Development: Assessing the Crisis, Envisioning the Recovery. 2020 Human Development Perspectives, United Nations Development Programme, New York, NY.
[2] Gaynor, T. S., and Wilson, M. E. (2020). “Social Vulnerability and Equity: The Disproportionate Impact of COVID ‐19.” Public Administration Review, 80(5), 832–838.
[3] Madhavan, G. (2020). “The Covid Recovery Comes Down to Engineering.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company.
[4] Arciszewski, T. (2006). “Civil Engineering Crisis.” Leadership and Management in Engineering, 6(1), 26–30.
[5] Shao, C. (2020). “The COVID Trolley Dilemma.” The American Journal of Surgery, Ethics, 220(3), 545–549.
[6] Gray, E., and Jackson, C. (2020). “Earth Day 2020 Report.” IPSOS MORI Global Advisors United Kingdom, 1(Public Data), 1–46.
[7] Ørsted. (2021). “Why a Green Energy Recovery is the Way Forward in a Post-COVID World.” The New York Times, Ørsted Energy Company, Ørsted Off-Shore Wind.
[8] “Development of the First ASCE Code of Ethics.” (2007). American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), <https://www.asce.org/question-of-ethics-articles/dec-2007/> (Feb. 15, 2021).
[1] Personal Protective Equipment.
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