Environmental Engineering and Management

Abstract

Review: Environmental Engineering and Management By J.M. Baldasano and H. Power (Eds.) Reviewed by Umar Karim Mirza Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Pakistan J.M. Baldasano & H. Power (Eds.). Environmental Engineering and Management. Southampton, United Kingdom: WIT Press/Computational Mechanics Publications, 1998. 348 pp. (Environmental engineering series ISSN 1460-1427) ISBN 1-85312-602-0 (hard cover). US$196.00 If one discipline of engineering has a greater responsibility than others to help society meet the triple objectives of financial, ecological, and social sustainability, then it is undoubtedly environmental engineering. As described in its preface, this book is a compilation of the technical papers presented at the 1st International Conference on Environmental Engineering and Management, which was held in Barcelona, Spain, in 1998. So, the book should be categorized as conference proceedings. The editors have done well by organizing the 32 reviewed technical papers into eight sections. Each section deals with a different aspect of environment: Section 1: Environmental impact assessment (nine papers) Section 2: Life cycle assessment (two papers) Section 3: Information systems and training (three papers) Section 4: Energy conservation and air pollution (two papers) Section 5: Water resources, treatment and control (ten papers) Section 6: Environmental modeling (three papers) Section 7: Waste minimization (two papers) Section 8: Environmental management systems (one paper) An index of authors marks the end of the book. This book can be termed as a purely technical one in nature. The technical papers introduce new methods, techniques, and procedures for environmental management which modify the traditional approaches, and they illustrate the fact that the focus has now been shifted from pollution control to pollution prevention. Since the included technical papers deal with a variety of topics in the field of environmental engineering and management, it can be safely said that anyone working in this field will find something of interest in this book. Especially, I would recommend this book to active researchers, although with some reservation because this book was published in 1998 and it may