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First Annual Hague Summer Institute on Peace Engineering

The application of science and engineering principles to promote and support peace

The Hague, Netherlands // August 19-23, 2019

Over the past five years, there has been a renewed interest in the field of Peace Engineering; a concept first introduced in 2005 by Aarne Vesilind who defined it as ‘the proactive use of engineering skills to promote a peaceful and just existence for all people’. Another definition proposed by the International Federation of Educational Engineering Societies (IFEES) considers peace engineering as ‘the application of science and engineering principles to promote and support peace’. It recognizes the importance of the contribution of the engineering profession to ‘a world where prosperity, sustainability, social equity, entrepreneurship, transparency, community voice and engagement and a culture of quality thrive’.

Peace Engineering represents a unique platform to emphasize the importance of the engineering profession in addressing in a multidisciplinary and global manner the peacebuilding aspects of many complex challenges faced by humanity in the 21st century. Examples of these challenges include: climate change; national and global population growth and migration; rapid urbanization; security and transparency of water, energy, land and food resources; access to shelter, health and education; transportation and communication services; disaster risk and emergency management; environmental protection and natural resource management; and resource management in transboundary and conflict-prone areas.

In 2018, Drexel University launched the first ever MS degree in Peace Engineering and the University of New Mexico (UNM) held the first conference on peace engineering in Albuquerque. The conference brought over 500 people from academia, the private and
public sectors, and civil society (44 countries, 301 institutions). The conference emphasized that engineering is indeed critical to peacebuilding, peacemaking and peacekeeping. At the same time, it raised many questions about the research, educational, and outreach components of peace engineering. For instance: (i) How can engineers best be equipped with the attitudes, skills and knowledge necessary to work at the intersection between what is expected of them by society in their professional careers and the peacebuilding, peacemaking and peacekeeping activities; (ii) how can peace engineering foster a new ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship (business and social) and (iii) how peace data can measure our positive and negative interactions and impact on peace both as they happen and over time.

Since the launching of the program at Drexel and the UNM conference, various parties around the world have voiced an interest in learning more about peace engineering and possibly contributing to its development. These parties recognize that there is a need to educate engineers to be more than just providers of technical solutions when addressing development and peace issues. There is also a need to scale up peace engineering worldwide by developing programs that are likely to resonate well with the current and future generations of engineers.

A first step in scaling up peace engineering at the international level is to establish a multidisciplinary and international community of practice to help shape the education, research and development, outreach and practical components of this new emerging field of engineering. A second step is to recognize that, at a minimum, any peace engineering program should give engineering students the tools and mobility to: (i) learn who they are as global citizen engineers; (ii) become familiar with the fundamentals of conflict management and peace studies; (iii) acquire the skills necessary to work in different socioeconomic, political and cultural contexts of peacebuilding, peacemaking and peacekeeping; (iv) become systems thinkers and competent in using tools from systems and complexity sciences; (v) see peace and conflict with a systems perspective; (vi) be cognizant of the nexus between policies and science, technology and (vii) learn to measure, model and simulate peaceful interactions across varying conditions.

Finally, a third step in scaling up peace engineering is to complement the core components mentioned above with additional tools and concepts specific to the development and peace issues being addressed. It is possible to envision, for instance, a portfolio of different types of peace engineering educational and professional programs (e.g. degrees and certificates) based on context (cultural, political, environmental, climatic, physical, etc.) and scale (physical and temporal) at which peace and development issues are being considered.

The 2019 Summer Institute

We are inviting a select group of leading contributors to this  emerging field (20-30) to attend a founding workshop on Peace Engineering (PE) in the Hague, NL from August 13-18, 2019. The goals of the workshop are fourfold: (i) convene a multidisciplinary group of participants interested in Peace Engineering to help define and launch the field; (ii) review existing programs and activities related to PE; (iii) begin integrating PE into the education, research and outreach components in academia, the private sector, public sector, and civil society; (iv) develop an action plan for a PE community of practice for the 2019-2020 time frame and beyond.

We envision the workshop to consist of a combination of keynote lectures, breakout group discussion periods, and presentations of case studies illustrating the range of applications of PE in addressing complex issues, in both the expected areas such as those related to the United Nations SDGs, transboundary issues, and violent conflicts; and in unexpectedly positive ways, in industry itself. We expect the workshop participants to become the founding and supporting members of a new PE group or society.