New Vision for Water Resources Engineering: Beyond Vision 2025

Abstract

The Vision for Civil Engineering in 2025 (Vision 2025) (ASCE 2006) was published in 2006 and since has been translated into several languages. A companion document, Achieving the Vision for Civil Engineering in 2025: A Roadmap for the Profession (Roadmap) (ASCE 2009) was published in 2008 and suggests many ways the profession can implement Vision 2025. It is interesting that neither document mentions ASCE’s Institutes and only the Roadmap document mentions Civil Engineering Certification Inc. (CEC), the parent organization of the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers. In 2012, Towards a Sustainable Water Future, Visions for 2050 was published by the Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI) of ASCE looking out beyond 2025, all the way to 2050. Many great ideas are generated therein. This paper proposes to look at the two Vision 2025 documents and some of the ideas proposed in the 2012 EWRI document and other related documents for possible implementation in the water resources engineering area. The major focus will be on educational issues. INTRODUCTION In the world of association visioning publications, it is amazing how quickly the time passes. The world imagined by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), in The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century (NAE 2004) and the companion volume Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century (NAE 2006) is now less than six years away. Already many changes forecast early in the last decade have become reality. Similarly Vision 2025 is a mere 11 years away. We review several visions of the future of civil engineering education and more specifically water resources engineering as we look to the future. In addition to the Vision 2025 documents we also look even further into the future and examine Towards a Sustainable Water Future, Visions for 2050 which was developed by the Environmental and Water Resources Institute of ASCE. ASCE VISION 2025 The Vision 2025 process is described as a nearly 8 year long process (ASCE, 2014) from original concept to culmination with the issuance of the Roadmap document. A steering committee of 17 members was formed in the summer of 2005 that 794 World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2014: Water without Borders © ASCE 2014