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DelftX: Beyond Engineering: Building with Nature

Learn how to use Social Design Principles in developing more effective and sustainable hydraulic infrastructure, with an emphasis on delta, coastal and port environments.

Beyond Engineering: Building with Nature
6 weeks
3–4 hours per week
Self-paced
Progress at your own speed
Free
Optional upgrade available

There is one session available:

After a course session ends, it will be archivedOpens in a new tab.
Starts Mar 19
Ends Jun 30

About this course

Skip About this course

If you’re a coastal engineer, ecologist or planner, then this is the course for you. You already know that engineering and ecological principles are not enough to realize nature-friendly solutions in practice. You need people on your side!

In this course you will learn how to build a relevant coalition of stakeholders to support the design and implementation of ecosystem-based hydraulic infrastructures. After learning basic stakeholder mapping and game theory techniques, you will apply Social Design Principles to a Building with Nature ecosystem-based design case. This will equip you to identify promising collaborative arrangements for your engineering or planning practice.

The course builds on the previous Building with Nature MOOC, which explored the use of natural materials and ecological processes in achieving effective and sustainable hydraulic infrastructure designs, distilling Engineering and Ecological Design Principles. In this course, the missing element of Social Design Principles are developed and taught.

You’ll learn from renowned Dutch engineers and international environmental scientists, who work at the technical- governance interface. Iconic examples such as the Maasvlakte II expansion to Rotterdam Harbor and the Delfland Sand Engine Mega-nourishment serve as study material. The challenges in designing and implementing these nature-friendly hydraulic infrastructures are explored by the eminent professors who were responsible for their genesis.

Join us in becoming one of the new generation of engineers, ecologists and planners who see the Building with Nature integrated design approach as critical to hydraulic engineering, nature and society.

LICENSE The course materials of this course are Copyright Delft University of Technology and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) 4.0 International License.

At a glance

  • Institution: DelftX
  • Subject: Biology & Life Sciences
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Prerequisites:

    Strongly recommended that you complete Engineering: Building with Nature (BwN101x) prior to this course. For learners who are not familiar with the Engineering and Ecological Design Principles from the first course, links will be provided to crucial educational material to enable them to complete this course. Learners must realize that this will require extra study hours (8 - 16 extra hours).

  • Language: English
  • Video Transcript: English
  • Associated skills:Governance, Design Elements And Principles, Integrated Design, Coastal Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Infrastructure, Game Theory

What you'll learn

Skip What you'll learn
  • Identify relevant stakeholders for the design and implementation of nature-friendly hydraulic infrastructure.
  • Analyze the power and interests of these stakeholders, including their interdependence in terms of resources.
  • Apply basic game-theory principles in combination with the stakeholder analysis to determine potential coalitions in a Building with Nature project case.
  • Evaluate the suitability of the coalitions for designing and implementing a particular Building with Nature project case.

0. Necessary Background Knowledge
1. Why Beyond Engineering?
2. Stakeholder Identification and Mapping
3. Game Theory
4. Social Design Principles
5. Towards Coalition Building

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