GE Look Ahead: What Challenges Will Engineers Face in 2050

Look Ahead – an online publication sponsored by General Electric and produced by The Economist Group – recently asked me what will be the greatest challenges most engineers will face in 2050. My response:

Call me a pessimist, but I believe engineers will be in a race against time and climate change to replace destroyed and failing 20th-century infrastructure–roads, power lines, pipelines, etc–with new technologies, materials and networks out of necessity.

Hurricane Sandy in 2012 not only exposed the weaknesses of America’s coastal infrastructure, but also the inability of local governments to afford replacements in the face of increasingly frequent storms. Meanwhile, the back-to-back-to-back typhoons Pablo, Yolanda and Glenda in the Philippines exposed just how difficult it will be for developing nations to physically rebuild ahead of the next storm.

The greatest challenge for engineers will be developing and deploying more resilient solutions at scale, whether that be solar micro-grids, new transportation alternatives and, (hopefully), cheap, transformative infrastructure that hasn’t been invented yet.

Please click through for further thoughts from luminaries at GE, the Institute for the Future, and more.