Concepts of Transdisciplinary Engineering: A Transdisciplinary Landscape

The term ‘transdisciplinary’ is receiving increased attention within engineering academic and research funding communities. We survey authors of papers presented at the 27th ISTE International Transdisciplinary Engineering Conference (TE2020) to answer two research questions: 1) How do authors define transdisciplinary engineering? 2) What do authors perceive differentiates interdisciplinary engineering research from transdisciplinary engineering research? Responses from thirty-four participants (50%), are qualitatively analysed. Results show that for the three characteristics commonly used in characterisations of transdisciplinarity (goal, collaboration and integration), multiple concepts exist. These range from generic expressions which overlap with how interdisciplinarity is defined within the general literature, to stronger, more definitive expressions. Conclusions find that rather than a single definition a transdisciplinary landscape exists. To enable users to define where they sit in the transdisciplinary landscape, we create a framework enabling users to map their position under the three key characteristics of goal, collaboration and integration

Managing the Performance of Asset Acquisition and Operation with Decision Support Tools

Decision support tools (DSTs) are increasingly being used to assist with asset acquisition and management decisions. Whether these tools are “fit for purpose” will have both economic and non-economic implications. Despite this, the on-going governance of DST performance receives only limited attention within both the academic and industry literature. This work addresses that research gap. Within this paper a conceptual process for managing the operational performance of decision support tools is presented. The novelty of the approach is that it aligns with the ISO 5500x:2014 Asset Management Standard, therefore introducing consistency in the governance of DSTs with physical engineered assets. A case study of the UK’s National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) is used to inform the approach design. The evaluation demonstrates it to be both logical and useable within the context of NGET and they have expressed an intention to implement the approach within their business. A key finding of the research was that DSTs transcend functions and organisations. This is significant and can lead to a situation whereby performance and criticality are interpreted and measured differently. The introduction of a common approach for managing DST performance works towards improving consistency and creating a shared understanding

Transdisciplinarity Within the Academic Engineering Literature

Despite increased discourse around transdisciplinary (TD) research, there is a perception it has received less attention within engineering. This is significant if, as generally accepted, TD increases the societal value of research. This paper benchmarks TD engineering research against the broader TD literature, addressing the question: How do the characteristics of the academic engineering TD literature compare to the TD academic literature in general? We analyse the chronology, journals, and text of papers referencing TD within their abstract and compare this to papers that fall within the engineering subject area. The conclusions find that TD research is limited generally, and within engineering specifically. Historically, TD research focuses on sustainability challenges, a persistent trend within the general literature. Within engineering research, the focus of TD is wider and addresses operational and “grand challenge” problems. TD remains poorly defined and future work should focus on clarifying meaning within the engineering discipline

Classifying the Disciplinarity of Engineering Academic Literature

Based on the appearance of the term within the academic literature, it would appear that transdisciplinarity (TD) approaches are receiving increased research attention. However, the literature suggests a lack of consensus over how TD is defined and classified. This could give rise to inconsistency and papers that claim to be TD which are not, and alternatively papers that fail to mention TD but which might be classified as such. This is significant and creates a challenge in identifying the true level of TD research. This work contributes towards understanding the state of TD within engineering. Explicitly, we address the research question: Is the engineering academic literature claiming to be TD, actually TD? Within this study we operationalise the work of Jantsch and use this as a means to classify the disciplinarity of 177 engineering journal papers which reference TD within their abstract. The results show only 24% to be TD. The majority (64%) are classified as interdisciplinary. Conclusions find that to improve consistency, a clear definition and rules for differentiation between TD and ID research are required. Future work calls for: (1) comparative studies which apply different methods for assessing disciplinarity across the dataset used within this study and which use the method employed within this study across different fields. (2) Research to analyse whether TD working is being undertaken in engineering without it being referenced within the paper