Engineering: Cleaning Water, Producing Food, Building Shelters

Windsor, Ontario

Human survival requires that we drink water, eat food, breath sufficiently oxygenated air, and enjoy a safe shelter. Historically, shelter was perhaps the most important since, as hunter-gathers, wild animals, fish, and uncultivated plants provided the food sources while rivers, streams, lakes, and surface pools supplied the drinking water. Shelter protected against the vagaries of weather, climate, and possible animal attacks, including other humans. In the provision of these needs, artisans, skilled trades, technicians, and engineers have played pivotal roles since erect human beings first populated the Earth. In a global survey seven out of ten people think engineers’ societal contributions are undervalued and largely unrecognized. However, the same people also believe engineering’s first priority is to solve the world’s problems by 2035, including improving renewable energy and healthcare, and they are equally expectant that as the global population continues to increase, water, food, and housing scarcities can be addressed by engineering. These challenging responsibilities, long familiar to engineering undertakings, invariably encountered political, cultural, geographical, and economic obstacles in the pursuit of providing societies with acceptable, sustainable, and affordable solutions. In this paper, the challenges faced, both in the past and now, by engineering with regard to improving drinking water quality, increasing food quantity and quantity, and providing adequate housing are discussed along with some observations on how and why some of the present obstacles may be exacerbated in the future