Introduction To Infrastructure

Introduction to Infrastructure

Introduction to Infrastructure: An Introduction to Civil and Environmental Engineering breaks new ground in preparing civil and environmental engineers to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The authors use the infrastructure that is all around us to introduce students to civil and environmental engineering, demonstrating how all the parts of civil and environmental engineering are interrelated to help students see the "big picture" in the first or second year of the curriculum. Students learn not only the what of the infrastructure, but also the how and the why of the infrastructure. Readers learn the infrastructure is a system of interrelated physical components, and how those components affect, and are affected by, society, politics, economics, and the environment. Studying infrastructure allows educators and students to develop a valuable link between fundamental knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge, so students may translate their knowledge to new contexts. The authors' implementation of modern learning pedagogy (learning objectives, concrete examples and cases, and hundreds of photos and illustrations), and chapters that map well to the ABET accreditation requirements AND the ASCE Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge 2nd edition (with recommendations for using this text in a 1, 2, or 3 hour course) make this text a key part of any civil and/or environmental engineering curriculum.

Introduction to Infrastructure

Perspectives and Implications for the Development of Information Infrastructures

In the same way that infrastructures such as transportation, electricity, sewage, and water supply are widely assumed to be integrators of urban spaces, information infrastructures are assumed to be integrators of information spaces. With the advent of Web 2.0 and new types of information infrastructures such as online social networks and smart mobile platforms, a more in-depth understanding of the various rights to access, use, develop, and modify information infrastructure resources is necessary. Perspectives and Implications for the Development of Information Infrastructures aims at addressing this need by offering a fresh new perspective on information infrastructure development. It achieves this by drawing on and adapting theory that was initially developed to study natural resource commons arrangements such as inshore fisheries, forests, irrigation systems, and pastures, while placing great emphasis on the complex problems and social dilemmas that often arise in the negotiations.