MSc Future Infrastructure, Climate Change, and Sustainability

Students in this MSc programme study a range of compulsory and optional courses to complete 180 credits:

• Core courses specific to your programme
• Edinburgh Futures Institute core courses (40 credits) which teach:
  
  • The essential, critical and hands-on data skills
  • Climate change understanding (only applicable for Sustainable Lands & Cities, Future Infrastructure, Circular Economy and Planetary Health MScs)
  • Enquiry methods
  • The ethical and creative capacities needed to underpin your programme-based studies
• A choice of short optional courses (at least two of which must be on topics related to your programme, with scope to study across the entire portfolio)
• A project (taking the form of a 20-credit ‘knowledge integration and project planning’ course, and a 40-credit final project)

Core Courses

In addition to the Edinburgh Futures Institute shared core courses, you will take courses compulsory to your programme covering:

• An exploration of the global challenges to infrastructure including:
  
  • Habitat
  • Transport
  • Coastal defences
  • Buildings
  • Communities for cities and rural areas
• An opportunity to debate and explore the global scale of the task ahead to address these challenges through policy innovation

Optional Courses

Edinburgh Futures Institute offers a wide range of optional courses taught by academic staff from many different discipline areas, including those associated with your programme. The exact courses offered vary from year to year. Optional courses from across the EFI postgraduate portfolio cover a range of themes and topics, such as:

• How the climate crisis is connected to health
• The inter-relationship of place, people and nature in urban regeneration
• Critical perspectives on how new technologies are changing society
• Data, programming and research skills that advance the skills taught in the EFI shared core
• How new and rapidly changing technologies and data sources are transforming the future of democracy
• What the future of education might look like
• How narratives drive the way we understand the world
• Service design and service management in a data-driven society
• Current challenges and futures for the creative industries

The project

In your final project, you will apply your learning in depth to a domain, issue or concern which drives you. Your final project can be:

• Based on your own personal or professional interests
• Defined by your employer
• Sponsored by one of the Futures Institute’s industry, government, or community partners
• Aligned to one of our research programmes

You will submit your final project as a written piece of work or combine text with other forms – for example:

• Video
• Visualisation
• A digital artefact
• Performance
• Code

Part-time and full-time options

Full-time students on the programme complete their full credit requirements in one year. Part-time students take the same number of courses as full-time students, over two years:

• For two-year part-time study, you usually take 80 credits in year one and 100 credits (including the project) in year two.

You can also study towards a Postgraduate Certificate or Postgraduate Diploma:

• You have two years to undertake the Postgraduate Diploma, taking the same taught courses as students on the MSc, but not the project. You will take a total of 120 credits of courses across the two years.
• You have one year to undertake the Postgraduate Certificate, taking 60 credits of courses, including:
  
  • A combination of the ‘shared core’ courses
  • At least 20 credits of programme-specific courses
  • The broader suite of Edinburgh Futures Institute optional courses

On successful completion of this programme, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Climate change infrastructure challenges and possible climate futures and related adaptation and resilience requirements
• Key factors, functions, and diversity of infrastructure for various subsectors and the social policy, and business landscapes in which this infrastructure operates, including sustainable development goals and ESGs
• Projected climate change impacts and risks for society and future infrastructure responses required

You will be able to:

• Use interdisciplinary analysis, draw on different empirical sources, analytical perspectives and sub-disciplines within infrastructure sectors
• Apply analytical thinking to synthesise and critically appraise key issues and particular contexts for effective and sustainable infrastructure strategies
• Apply creative, analytical, data-informed and innovative thinking to complex social challenges and to develop appropriate sustainable solutions
• Apply futuring methodologies to a range of challenges and concerns
• Demonstrate an understanding of ethical dilemmas, social responsibility, and sustainability issues

Global and national activities to deliver more sustainable infrastructure and address climate change challenges are creating exciting career opportunities in industry (local to multi-national), local and regional government, NGOs and international bodies and organisations.

The core elements of the programme address the data and higher-order skills we know are important for the future of work, confident and critical citizenship, and a thriving, just society. The multidisciplinary nature of the learning and core courses of this MSc means graduates have a wide range of skills to address the challenges of the modern world and our rapidly changing environment.

Graduates with essential skills from this MSc will be well-equipped to enter the job market and meet the needs of this growing and vital area. Careers may include roles in areas such as:

• Policy
• Innovation
• Consultancy
• Legal
• Banking and investment
• Economic development
• Planning, delivery, and critical infrastructure