The M.Sc. Sustainable Critical Infrastructure (M.Sc. in SCI) program will be conducive to developing highly skilled researchers and workforce and attracting substantial government and industry interest. The academic program is designed to develop core capabilities, through the integration of coursework and research that is critical to the region. The current scope of the academic programs provides the following set of core capabilities: advanced materials, thermal-fluid sciences, water, and environmental technologies, power systems, computational and information sciences, policy and economic modeling, engineering systems, Microsystems, and chemical processes.
Urban development will continue globally while the requirements for reducing its ecological footprint and carbon emissions, in particular, will be increasingly more aggressive. The Sustainable Critical Infrastructure (SCI) Program aims at advancing research and education in integrated sustainable infrastructure development. The program is addressed to architects, urban planners, and civil engineers, as well as engineers, building scientists interested in infrastructure planning.
The need for urban critical infrastructure development and maintenance will remain acute, as urbanization will be a continuing process well into the middle of the century to accommodate the growing global population and migration waves. Infrastructures can be defined as “network[s] of independent man-made systems and processes that function collaboratively and synergistically to produce and distribute a continuous flow of essential goods and services.” Typical critical infrastructure systems include:
Transportation networks
Logistics systems (including waste processing and reverse logistics),
Buildings and urban components
Energy generation and distribution systems
Water supply and wastewater treatments systems,
Information and communication technology (ICT) systems etc.
The efficiency and reliability of urban critical infrastructure affect many aspects of society that include the cost of food and consumer goods, health and safety of citizens, availability and reliability of power systems, reliability and speed of telecommunications, travel times. Critical infrastructures also affect the environment and natural resources.
Objectives
The Master of Science in Sustainable Critical Infrastructure will meet its overarching goal (objective) to educate its graduates professionally and ethically to be valuable professionals in the UAE and internationally with disciplinary preparation that imparts the following:
Ability to design integrated urban infrastructure systems for new or existing developments with careful examination of environmental, social and financial requirements.
Ability to apply planning and design tools using multi-disciplinary inputs in order to effectively generate and implement solutions to urban infrastructure problems.
Understanding of the complex interactions between infrastructure systems solutions and their implications on larger scale (regional, national, global) technological, economic, societal and environmental systems with a view on long-term sustainability.
Understanding of the value of technical and scientific scholarship, service to society, leadership and life-long learning required to further their career aspirations in support of the needs of the community.
Overall structure and requirements
The M.Sc. in Sustainable Critical Infrastructure (SCI) program consists of a minimum of 36 credit hours. The required program credits are distributed as follows: 12 credits of Program Core courses, 12 credits of Program Elective courses, and 12 credits of SCI Master’s Thesis work. A student may organize the selection of the elective courses and the master’s thesis topic to follow a specialization track within the broad field of SCI. In such cases, the track will be noted on the student’s transcript. The table below presents a summary of the M.Sc. in SCI degree program structure and requirements. All the M.Sc. in SCI program courses, with the exception of the Seminar in Research Methods and the Master’s Thesis, have a credit rating of three credits each.
Summary of M.Sc. in SCI Degree Program Structure and Requirements
Category
Credits Required
Program Core
12
Seminar in Research Methods
0
Program Electives
12
SCI Master’s Thesis
12
Total
36
