Urban engineering is the delivery of municipal engineering services, such as the supply of potable water, the removal and disposal of sewage, the protection of life and property from stormwater, the disposal of solid waste, and the provision of road-based transport systems.
The delivery of each of these services requires engineering in respect of the long-term planning of the infrastructure or network, detailed design of the elements of the network, construction of each of these elements, ongoing operation and maintenance, regular rehabilitation of the infrastructure and, when necessary, planning, design and expansion.
Equally important is the need to co-ordinate the design and delivery of all the services and to understand the social, anthropological, cultural, financial and political and other contexts in which delivery takes place.
The group’s research is aimed at developing an integrated understanding of the interaction between private-sector investment logic, public-sector intervention logic and the technocratic prediction of the urban situation.
Current research areas include public sector decision-making, public sector decision making, benchmarking municipal infrastructure costs, and modelling land use. Related areas include geographic information systems, water supply and catchment management, sewage treatment and transport.