Risk and Uncertainty: Important Topics in Engineering Education
The NSPE Licensure and Qualifications for Practice Committee has been investigating the Body of Knowledge reports that have been prepared for several engineering disciplines and considering what outcomes that are critical to engineering practice addressed in those reports are not currently incorporated in engineering curricula. The evaluation of risk and uncertainty is one of those critical components. The adequate protection of public health, safety, and welfare is dependent upon professional engineers’ ability to appropriately evaluate risk and uncertainty in engineering planning and design.
In a recent draft position statement for NSPE, the Licensure and Qualifications for Practice Committee made the following statement:
The assessment of risk and uncertainty is a fundamental component of engineering practice. On a daily basis, professional engineers are faced with determining how much data is enough to define a problem or to characterize existing conditions. Factors of safety are assessed analytically in some disciplines, and subjectively in all areas of practice. In some engineering programs, engineering students are currently taught rudimentary probability and statistics, applicable to perhaps determining how many ping pong balls are black versus white, yet an academic background in the assessment of risk and uncertainty as it applies to engineering decision-making and design is typically not provided. We as a society have learned from several notable disasters, such as the loss of the Challenger spacecraft and the I-35 bridge collapse, that engineers need to be in responsible charge of decision-making on technical matters when public health and safety are at risk. In view of these examples and others, all engineers need sufficient background such that they can identify and assess risk and uncertainty and take the initiative in the decision-making process when necessary. The adequate protection of public health, safety and welfare demands that the assessment of risk and uncertainty be incorporated in the engineering thought process throughout engineering curricula, beginning with undergraduate engineering education.
In the education of engineers, we teach students to assess issues, make reasonable assumptions, and calculate the “right” answer. In classroom examinations, we assess students’ ability to calculate the “right” answer. In the Fundamentals of Engineering and the Principles and Practice of Engineering examinations, we assess licensure candidates’ ability to calculate the “right” answer. And yet, the real challenge in engineering practice isn’t calculating the right answer; that is often the easy part. The real challenge is in understanding how wrong the right answer is likely to be. This varies somewhat by engineering discipline, as some engineering disciplines are more definitive and less subject to variables than others, but the issue is applicable nonetheless to all disciplines.
The protection of the public health, safety and welfare will be enhanced if professional engineers, both in their education and experience, focus on appropriately assessing risk and uncertainty in design.
