Description | Recommended courses
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Description
The goal of environmental engineering is to ensure that societal development and the use of water, land and air resources are sustainable. This goal is achieved by managing these resources so that environmental pollution and degradation is minimized.
Environmental engineers study water, soil and air pollution problems, and develop technical solutions needed to solve, attenuate or control these problems in a manner that is compatible with legislative, economic, social and political concerns. Civil engineers are particularly involved in such activities as water supply and sewerage, management of surface water and groundwater quality, remediation of contaminated sites and solid waste management.
The activities of such engineers include, but are not limited to, the planning, design, construction and operation of water and wastewater treatment facilities in municipalities and industries, modelling and analysis of surface water and groundwater quality, design of soil and remediation systems, planning for the disposal and reuse of wastewaters and sludges, and the collection, transport, processing, recovery and disposal of solid wastes according to accepted engineering practices.
Environmental engineers are called upon to play an important role in environmental protection, because engineering solutions are required to meet the environmental standards set by legislation.
Consulting firms, municipalities, government agencies, industries and non-governmental organizations and specialized contractors are potential employers for civil engineers with a specialization in environmental engineering.
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Recommended courses
In order to achieve a specialization in Environmental Engineering at the undergraduate level, the following courses are:
- Strongly recommended:
CIVE 421
Municipal Systems
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: Design of water-related municipal services; sources of water and intake design; estimation of water demand and wastewater production rates; design, construction and maintenance of water distribution, wastewater and stormwater collection systems; pumps and pumping stations; pipe materials, network analysis and optimization; storage; treatment objectives for water and wastewater.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
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CIVE 430
Water Treatment&Pollut Control
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: Principles of water and sewage treatment. Water and sewage characteristics; design of conventional unit operations and processes; laboratory analyses of potable and waste waters.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
CIVE 451
Course not available
- Recommended:
CIVE 428
Water Resrces & Hydraulic Eng.
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: Application of continuity, energy and momentum equations to open channel flow; design of channels considering uniform flow and flow resistance, non-uniform flow and longitudinal profiles; design of channel controls and transitions; unsteady flow and flood routing; river ice engineering; sediment transport and river morphology; sustainability in river engineering; industry standard numerical models.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024 academic year
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CIVE 520
Groundwater Hydrology
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: Fundamentals of subsurface hydrological processes. Field data and simulation under parameter uncertainty. Numerical modelling. Quantifying groundwater resources and groundwater flow to wells. Groundwater sustainability from a multidisciplinary perspective including engineering and policy.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
- Prerequisites: CIVE 311 and CIVE 323; Graduate students: Permission of instructor.
- Restriction(s): Not open to students who have taken CIVE 546 in Winter 2012.
- Note 1: (3-0-6).
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024 academic year
CIVE 521
Nanomat & the Aquatic Environ
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: Environmental impacts and applications of nanomaterials. Topics: physicochemical characterization of nanoparticles in aquatic media, colloid chemistry for understanding nanoparticle aggregation and mobility in the environment, mechanisms of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production by nanomaterials, nanomaterials for environmental remediation and water treatment, methodologies for assessing nanoparticle toxicity, novel research developments.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
- 3-0-6
- Offered each year, one year by the Department of Chemical Engineering and one year by the Department of Civil Engineering
- Prerequisite(s): CHEE 315 or CIVE 225 or MIME 356 or equivalent; CHEE 310 or CIVE 430 or CHEM 233 or equivalent; or permission of instructor.
- Restriction: Not open to students who have taken CHEE 521.
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024 academic year
CIVE 550
Water Resources Management
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: State-of-the-art water resources management techniques; case studies of their application to Canadian situations; identification of major issues and problem areas; interprovincial and international river basins; implications of development alternatives; institutional arrangements for planning and development of water resources; and, legal and economic aspects.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
- (3-0-6)
- Prerequisite (Undergraduate): CIVE 323 or equivalent
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024 academic year
CIVE 555
Environmental Data Analysis
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: Application of statistical principles to design of measurement systems and sampling programs. Introduction to experimental design. Graphical data analysis. Description of uncertainty. Hypothesis tests. Model parameter estimation methods: linear and nonlinear regression methods. Trend analysis. Statistical analysis of censored data. Statistics of extremes.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
- (3-0-6)
- Prerequisite (Undergraduate): CIVE 302 or permission of instructor
CIVE 557
Microbio for Environmental Eng
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: Microbiological concepts applied to the practice of environmental engineering and biotechnologies including the following topics: cellular and pathway organizations, evolution, growth, gene expression, horizontal gene transfer, metabolic microbial diversity, ecosystem structures, and quantitative mathematical modelling.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
- Prerequisite: CIVE 225 or permission of the instructor
- (3-1-5)
CIVE 572
Computational Hydraulics
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: Computation of unsteady flows in open channels; abrupt waves, flood waves, tidal propagations; method of characteristics; mathematical modelling of river and coastal currents.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
- (3-0-6)
- Prerequisite: CIVE 327 or equivalent
CIVE 574
Fluid Mech of Water Pollution
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: Mixing, dilution and dispersion of pollutants discharged into lakes, rivers, estuaries and oceans; salinity intrusion in estuaries and its effects on dispersion; biochemical oxygen demand and dissolved oxygen as water quality indicators; thermal pollution; oil pollution.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
- (3-0-6)
- Prerequisite: CIVE 327 or equivalent.
CIVE 577
River Engineering
3 Credits
Offered in the:
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Civil Engineering: Fluvial geomorphology; sediment properties; river turbulence; mechanics of the entrainment, transportation and deposition of solids by fluids; threshold of movement; bed forms; suspended load, bed load and total load equations; stable channel design and regime rivers; river modelling; river engineering; and river management.
Offered by: Civil Engineering
- (3-0-6)
- Prerequisite (Undergraduate): CIVE 428 or permission of the instructor.
- Corequisite (Graduate): CIVE 428
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024 academic year
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Students may also choose to specialize in the area of Environmental Engineering by completing a Minor in Environmental Engineering, which is offered through the Faculty of Engineering. Alternatively, students have the opportunity to gain exposure to non-engineering aspects of environment studies by completing a Minor through the McGill School of Environment.
A Master's Degree in Environmental Engineering is also available in the Faculty of Engineering of Ï㽶ÊÓƵ. Graduate studies are strongly encouraged in environmental engineering since a graduate degree is often a preferred qualification for the potential employers that were mentioned above.
