Discussion of Paul Jowitt’s paper ‘Systems and sustainability’

ABSTRACT

Jowitt’s paper suggests that civil engineering systems engineers require an ethical imperative and a set of specific attributes. The ethics should include a broad understanding of value and values. Attributes of a successful systems-capable civil engineer are listed in a table stemming from an international workshop. They can be summed up in terms of ASK: Attitude, Skills and Knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil engineering systems
• ethics
• value
• attitude
• skills
• knowledge

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Regarding economics and value, the commonly-used measure of GDP as a means of measuring community value is by no means logically consistent, partly because the value of money is changeable and context-dependent, and also because the assessment of value so easily shifts between extrinsic and intrinsic – objective or subjective – points of view. Is it possible that rigorous systems thinking could bring sense to the situation?

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Funding

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