Sustainability as a ‘super-wicked’ problem; opportunities and limits for engineering methodology

Abstract

Characterizing sustainability as a ‘super-wicked’ problem alerts us to issues beyond where current thinking about problem structuring enables engineers to deal with the merely wicked. Time is running out, no one authority is in control, we are the cause of the problem anyway, and we inherently discount the future in our everyday decision-making. When these are added to the usual definitions of wicked and messy problems, which only now are we addressing in engineering education, what are the potential limits and opportunities for the methodology of engineering in sustainability? Some modest extrapolations are discussed, based on the results from a recent research project in addressing energy planning in a city development zone. An analysis from another case study is also presented, which provides some triangulation of the ideas developed in this article.

Keywords:

• engineering education
• messy problems
• problem structuring methods
• super-wicked problems
• sustainability

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my thanks to the many colleagues, REs, students, and project partners who have provided constructive criticism of the ideas presented here in the various projects, supervisions, and lectures that have brought us together.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Mike Yearworth http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8468-0335

Notes

1. The evaluation methods used for the STEEP project have contributed a large part towards the reflections on methodology development presented in this article.

2. Full details of the STEEP methodology including video recordings of the partners’ training course can be found at http://smartsteep.eu/resources.

3. We use this term to describe students in order to acknowledge their status as equivalent to employees in the companies in which they are carrying out their research. The difference between this setting for engineering doctoral research and ‘traditional’ university-based research is discussed fully by Godfrey (2012).

4. In the sense of different from what might be considered as ‘normal’ engineering practice. The fact that these participatory approaches are so unusual to normal practice can lead to apparent surprise in research findings – hence the reference to “radical scientific method” in the work of Lane et al. (2011).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the EU FP7-ENERGY-SMARTCITIES-2012 (314277) project STEEP (Systems Thinking for Comprehensive City Efficient Energy Planning).