Presentation
Presentation by the dean Alberto Taliercio: How to best enjoy the choice you have made
The School of Civil, Environmental and Land Management Engineering offers degree Programmes in Environmental and Land Planning Engineering (Leonardo campus), Civil Engineering (Leonardo campus), Civil Engineering for Risk Mitigation (Lecco campus) and Geoinformatics Engineering (Leonardo campus).
The degree programme in Environmental and Land Planning Engineering deals with issues related to organizing and safeguarding the land, managing natural resources, protecting and restoring the environment. To be solved, these issues require technicians with a specific training, capable of identifying and developing projects both of a operational (e.g. emergency prevention and management) and strategic nature (development of remediation technologies, planning land exploitation).
The BSc course provides students with and adequate training in the analysis and resolution of issues that require the application of standard and consolidated tools that allow the most frequently encountered practical problems of this field to be dealt with. The programme develops a series of basic tools common to the various work areas in which environmental engineers are involved, and provides an understanding of the work of complementary professional figures (soil conservation, prevention of natural risks, planning and management, environmental remediation technologies).
The MSc course offers a high-profile curriculum including both theoretical (mathematics, statistics, computer science, engineering, planning and management) and specialist subjects, encompassing a variety of engineering fields. The programme, therefore, provides across-the-board training, integrating different areas of knowledge, so as to teach engineers how to address and solve macro-sectoral issues typical of Environmental and Land Planning Engineering projects.
The first year of the MSc course complements and strengthens the knowledge acquired by the students during the Bachelor course. This is achieved by offering in-depth training into a number of basic subjects, as well as theoretical and applied courses in the main specializing areas of this field (land protection, environmental engineering and land planning). The second-year courses allow students to deepen their knowledge in one of the main specializing areas: soil conservation and prevention of natural and industrial risks, environmental diagnostics and monitoring, environmental planning and management, control and remediation technologies.
The degree programme in Civil Engineering deals with the conception, design, construction, operation, maintenance and rehabilitation of buildings, industrial plants, roads, tunnels, bridges, dams and water management systems. In today's society, constructions and infrastructure networks are among the most important durable goods, both for their intrinsic value and for the functional role they play in the economic and social development of a country. The achievement of these works requires increasingly higher levels of safety and functionality, as well as usage of natural resources and energy which significantly affect economy and environment. One of the duties of Civil Engineers is ensuring that any development process fulfills appropriate sustainability criteria, to avoid penalizing future generations.
The BSc course is based on a single curriculum that, in the first two years, puts great emphasis on mathematical and scientific training. In the third year, students acquire the skills needed to complete their first-level training, i.e. the fundamentals of geotechnical, structural, hydraulic and infrastructure engineering.
The MSc course covers Geotechnics (foundations, tunnels, retaining structures, stability of slopes and excavations), Hydraulics (surface and underground waters, utilization and management of water, hydraulic land protection, plants and fluid-structure interaction), Transport Infrastructure (roads, railways, airports), Structures (buildings, places of assembly, bridges, industrial and energy plants), and Earthquake Engineering (earthquake resistant design, assessment and retrofitting of existing structures, study of earthquake-induced effects on structures).
The degree programme in Civil Engineering for Risk Mitigation aims to train civil engineers with a strong focus on subjects related with the hydrogeological risk of structures and infrastructures. Both in the BSc and the MSc courses, the traditional Civil Engineering subjects are combined with a systematic approach to risk assessment and management. Attention to building design and analysis and, more generally, to structural safety, is paralleled by subjects related to uncertainty analysis, with particular emphasis on natural hazards. In this context, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are considered essential tools supporting risk management, and in particular emergency management. Legal and socio-economic aspects are supplemented by technical and scientific skills, to enable future engineers to act consciously within the broad context they will have to cope with.
In educational terms, attention to integration means adopting an innovative approach that addresses various issues in integrated teaching modules. The approach is not simply "interdisciplinary" from a technical and scientific perspective, but also requires students to autonomously develop the skills required to interact with experts in other fields, in order to explore agreed solutions to any problems that might arise.
The MSc in Geoinformatics Engineering is a two-year international master course taught in English for Italian and foreign students. It is the first in Italy, and exploits the long-lasting experience of Politecnico di Milano in both Environmental, Geomatics and Computer Science.
Geoinformatics engineers possess deep preparation and strong attitude to solve problems relevant to geospatial information. More precisely, they will acquire the following skills, both on the methodological and practical point of views:
1. spatial information: acquisition and georeferencing, analysis, classification and processing, archiving, representation, publication and distribution;
2. computing infrastructures, software engineering, databases, computer security, web technologies.
In general, Geoinformatics Engineers find a placement in all the branches that use and develop geospatial information: GIS companies, Computer Science industry, national and local Agencies for the production of data relevant to cadaster, cartography and land management. Furthermore, Geoinformatics Engineers find job also in big companies or agencies that need and use geospatial information.