New BSc and MSc program in Civil Engineering:
In addition to the research activities, the section also focuses on the SDGs in relation to the various engineering programmes. Therefore, the section offers a new BSc and MSc program in Civil Engineering. The purpose of the new programs is to train civil engineers to combine knowledge and skills on construction with special skills in sustainability and digital construction – regardless of whether the task is construction of a building, a bridge, city planning or contemporary facades. 
Read article on the new program here   Read more about the new program here

 

You can watch this video and read more about how one of the section’s research units; ’CREATE - Computational Research in Emergent Architectural Technology’, contributes to the development of sustainable construction by 3D-printing resource-saving concrete constructions.

 

One of the section’s research areas, ’Urban Resilience’, focuses on how large cities can address both causes and effects of climate change, in a wider sustainable development perspective. This is a very relevant topic and SDU is therefore building a research group within this area.

Read the article, ‘Large cities must prepare for water and heating’

One of the section’s research areas is ‘Green and Sustainable Supply Chain Management’ which focuses on green and sustainable supply chains in relation to both the public sector and private companies. One of the challenging tasks within this area is that many companies fear that it is expensive and confusing to develop a green and sustainable profile. Therefore, one of the section’s research teams is developing a toolbox that can help especially small companies to overcome this challenge. The team is led by Professor Kannan Govindan, one of the world’s leading and most cited researchers within the area of Green Supply Chain Management. Read more about the toolbox and Kannan Govindan in this article in Danish

 

One of the section’s research areas, ‘Sustainable Supply Chain Management’, focuses on green and sustainable supply chains in relation to both public and private companies. In this article you can read how the public sector can contribute to the green transition by using sustainability and circularity as the most important indicators for public procurement. However, as evident in the article, this can be a challenging task. On the basis of the concept ‘Sustainable Procurement’, one of the section’s researchers Devika Kannan focused on this specific topic in relation to Danish companies in her PhD thesis.  

Read more about the concept and the challenges it poses for the companies and the public sector in this article in English 

One of the section’s focus areas in relation to the SDGs has been to rethink the Product Development and Innovation programme. As of February 2020, sustainability will be a fundamental value when the students work with product creation and innovation. This is accomplished by focusing on converting existing products into new products, and by ‘up-cycling’ old materials into new products. This will take place in a circular process where students learn to design entire systems, not just specific products, i.e. the entire process from the selection of material to the retailing of the product to consumers and the subsequent recycling of materials. The students will also learn to ensure proper disposal, when all the properties of the material have reached the end of their service life.

Read article about the reformed programme here

Read more about the new programme here offered from February 2020

One example of how the section contributes to the SDGs is the project ‘Overcoming barriers to improving OHS among SMEs in Myanmar’, which has been granted nearly DKK 5 million by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After the tragic incident where nearly 1,100 workers died in the Rana Plaza accident in Bangladesh in 2013, researchers, global producers of branded goods, political decision makers and NGO’s have paid increasing attention towards working for a healthy and safe working environment in the global south, focusing especially on ‘occupational health and safety’ (OHS). 

In this project, Head of Section and Professor Jan Vang and a research team investigates how OHS can be influenced in a positive direction in small and medium-sized companies by combining knowledge about OHS and productivity-enhancing measures (also knows as ‘integrated OHS-knowledge’). The main purpose of the project is to analyze how integrated OHS-knowledge can be expanded and applied successfully in an industry cluster in a developing country, and from there, how this knowledge can be used to build up communication- and implementation capacity at various labor market parties. The project started January 2020 and is expected to be finished by the end of 2022. 
Read this article about the projects

An example of how the section contributes to the SDGs is the project ‘Safety and health and audit practices in Bangladesh’, which has been granted nearly DKK 5 million by Danida Fellowship Centre. Because Western countries buy large amounts of products in developing countries, work-related health and safety in these countries gain increasing attention. An important element in this process is to monitor the implications of the working processes in order to guarantee the workers’ health and safety, which is a very resource-demanding task. However, we still only know little about how this inspection work out in practice, and whether it influences the manufacturing facilities in the developing countries or not. The project that involves both researchers in the section and other researchers from Denmark and Bangladesh, will therefore try to uncover the inspection-practices and their consequences for the workers safety and health. 
Read article about the projects