Emerging Interdisciplinary Fields in the Coming Intelligence/Convergence Era

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2012

DOI

10.2478/s13531-012-0014-4

Publication Title

Open Engineering

Volume

2

Issue

3

Pages

315-324

Abstract

Dramatic advances are in the horizon resulting from rapid pace of development of several technologies, including, computing, communication, mobile, robotic, and interactive technologies. These advances, along with the trend towards convergence of traditional engineering disciplines with physical, life, and other science disciplines will result in the development of new interdisciplinary fields, as well as in new paradigms for engineering practice in the coming intelligence/convergence era (post-information age). The interdisciplinary fields include Cyber Engineering, living systems engineering, Biomechatronics/Robotic engineering, Knowledge Engineering, Emergent/Complexity Engineering, and Multiscale Systems engineering.

The paper identifies some of the characteristics of the intelligence/convergence era, gives broad definition of convergence, describes some of the emerging interdisciplinary fields, and lists some of the academic and other organizations working in these disciplines. The need is described for establishing a Hierarchical Cyber-Physical Ecosystem for facilitating interdisciplinary collaborations, and accelerating development of skilled workforce in the new fields. The major components of the ecosystem are listed.

The new interdisciplinary fields will yield critical advances in engineering practice, and help in addressing future challenges in broad array of sectors, from manufacturing to energy, transportation, climate, and healthcare. They will also enable building large complex adaptive systems-of-systems, such as intelligent multimodal transportation systems, optimized multi-energy systems, intelligent disaster prevention systems, and smart cities.

Comments

From the Journal Open Engineering, formerly known as Central European Journal of Engineering

Rights

© 2012 Versita Warsaw.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) License.

Original Publication Citation

Noor, A. (2012). Emerging interdisciplinary fields in the coming intelligence/convergence era. Open Engineering, 2(3), 315-324. https://doi.org/10.2478/s13531-012-0014-4

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