Engineering, construction and operation of civil assets such as subsoils, roads, buried utilities, and coastal defence structures involve significant data volumes. The Civil Engineering & Management department teaches, develops, and evaluates cutting-edge digital solutions to support complex decision-making by structural engineers, project (information) managers, urban designers, and construction site operators. We uniquely approach digitalisation from a user-in-the-loop angle, examining user-centric digital solutions and the intricacies of digital technologies in a multi-stakeholder playing field.
Research
The Civil Engineering & Management includes a variety of perspectives on digital technologies, which include both the development of technological solutions and the study of their implementation by professional organisations. We also examine intelligent transport systems and app-driven shared mobility services. We examine solutions and perspectives to enhanced decision-making, faster and more sustainable construction practices. For example, the programme of ASPARi develops digital twins of asphalt paving processes to support operational decisions onsite, while ZoARG |ReDUCE develops digital mapping and registration solutions for underground cables and pipeline networks to reduce excavation damage to utilities and promote careful excavations. Also, circularity and digital lifecycle management is covered in projects like PACER. In the PRE-MADONA project, we develop and evaluate data-driven approaches to energy renovation in the built environment. Moreover, in the European project Conductor, we examine intelligent traffic management systems that allow efficient transport of passengers and goods. In SmartHubs we examine smart mobility hubs which integrate physical and digital dimensions of shared urban mobility.
Education
Digitalisation in our Bachelor programme is addressed in the Water Management module and Area Management module, which include courses on Programming for Engineering and Practical Geographic Information Systems Skills. BSc students also learn to work with simulation algorithms in the module Simulation & Stochastic Modelling in Civil Engineering. In our Master programme, further specialisations are possible in courses like Building Information Modelling, 5D and Planning, Digital Twinning for Infrastructures, Subsurface Infrastructure Data and Smart Mobility.
Collaboration
Development of digital technologies mostly takes place with the civil engineering industry users in mind. This means that CEM strongly collaborates with Dutch Road Agencies (Rijkswaterstaat), the asphalt paving sector (Ballast Nedam, BAM, Boskalis, Dura Vermeer, Heijmans, Strukton, Roelofs, KWS, TWW, and Van Gelder), the utility construction sector (Alliander, Enexis, GasUnie, Heijmans, Kadaster, KPN, Siers, and Vitens) and many more supply chain stakeholders.
We collaborate with Municipalities of Enschede, Rotterdam, Zwolle, and Amsterdam on a variety of digital (twin) solutions. This work takes places in context of national and EU projects, often together with partners like Saxion and Hanze Universities of Applied Sciences, and knowledge institutes of JIC, TKI Bouw en Techniek, and 4TU/14.UAS DAT Digitalisation.
Impact
We contribute to United Nation’s 9th and 11th Sustainable Development Goals ‘Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation’ and ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’.