Program Overview

Environmental Engineering for Sustainable Development

Objectives

The primary objective of the Environmental Engineering for Sustainable Development program is to provide students with a solid foundation in the fundamental subjects and a range of methodological tools from engineering sciences, enabling them to adopt a holistic approach to solving technical problems focused on sustainable development. This approach is increasingly required in various professional fields of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

In reference to the cultural themes of the L7 class, the degree has specific objectives to develop competencies in:

• planning, designing, implementing, and managing structures, infrastructure, facilities, and territorial resources, including raw and secondary materials
• interventions for maintenance and improvement of structural, functional, and energy performance of existing works
• interventions and systems for detection and distributed monitoring, as well as for the protection and safeguarding of the environment, territory, structures, and infrastructure networks from natural and anthropic risks and the effects of climate change
• interventions and systems for the remediation of contaminated environmental matrices, mitigation of hydro-geological instability, treatment of primary and wastewater, waste management, and material resource recovery, within the perspective of a circular economy
• interventions and systems for safety and civil protection management in the prevention phase and in emergency conditions

Curriculum

The educational path is based on a balanced compromise between the need to ensure a robust physical-mathematical preparation and the necessity to contain multiple technical-scientific sectors characteristic of the Civil-Environmental degree class. Consequently, the educational path includes, in the first year and part of the second, the following basic subjects: Mathematical Analysis I, Geometry, General Physics I, Chemistry, Mathematical Analysis II, General Physics II, Probability, and Rational Mechanics. This results in a significant number of teachings for a total of 66 CFU, with the aim of providing a preparation that is entirely comparable, in terms of character and quantity, to that of the traditional two-year period of the old five-year degree.

In the second and third years, the characteristic subjects typical of Civil-Environmental Engineering in the areas of fluid and solid mechanics, geotechnics and topography, raw and secondary materials, safety and health-environmental engineering, and territorial planning follow. These subjects are linked to the related and integrative ones necessary to extend some competencies and broaden the cultural horizons of students, covering the areas of ecology and earth sciences, as well as energy, energy systems, and electrical engineering.

The educational offer is completed by a group of four optional teachings, from which the student can choose 12 CFU in the various areas of interest of sustainability engineering related to the territory and productive activities, with a strongly interdisciplinary content and nature, oriented to consider the main environmental issues that engineering must address.

The educational path is completed with the knowledge of a foreign language (3 CFU at level B2), the final exam (3 CFU), and additional educational activities (Article 10, paragraph 5, letter d), to which 3 CFU are allocated.

The courses of the third year are taught in English.

Educational Activities

The educational activities are organized in modules. Each module is a set of educational activities belonging to a specific scientific-disciplinary sector that always concludes with a verification test. The laboratory modules are an exception, for which a judgment of suitability is foreseen. The lessons are divided into theory, exercises, and laboratory activities, mainly carried out at the laboratories available in the Latina headquarters, affiliated with the Ce.R.S.I.Te.S. (Center for Research and Services for Technological and Sustainable Innovation), or in other departmental structures of the degree course teachers.