What type of Engineer rebuilds basic infrastructure in war torn countries?

Question

I am thinking about going back to school and I want to be able to go to developing nations to help build/rebuild their basic infrastructure (ie- wells, basic irrigation, restore power, manage waste). My hope is that I'll be able to do that untill I am too old and then 'retire' to a boring office job. Should I go for Civil, Environmental, Argo?

TYPO- *Agro as in Agriculture

Answer 1

Both Civil and Structural engineers specialise in the kind of work you are looking for.
In university, the final years in a civil engineering course will help you specialise specifically on the kind of work you are looking for.

Answer 2

Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets! (Sorry, old industry joke)

I did an internship in Environmental Engineering while doing my undergrad in Mechanical Engineering. It sounds like you might want to study Mechanical Engineering; which is broad enough to be employed in any of those areas.

I would caution, however, that Environmental Engineering is not always "real engineering work"...but things like Environmental impact statements of building a chicken coup at the top of a hill where the run off of the coup poop runs down into the stream that is a water supply for the village. Not exactly saving the world.

A mechanical engineer has the bandwidth and ability to come up with the solutions to these problems through design and implementation. So do Civil engineers, but they are limited--whereas an ME can also work for places like wastewater facilities because they have a more broad knowledge in engineering than Civil Engineering that is more specialized. One thing I discoved after I graduated 10 years ago is that if you are an adaptive person, you will be able to change regardless of your discipline in engineering.

Maybe you could work as a contractor to the World Bank who Finances these kinds of operations.

Anyway, Hope my rant helped in some way.

Answer 3

All of them. That's what engineers do. Civil lays out plans, comes up with requirements as far as energy, water. Mechanical will probably design and buy specific components of power power plants, water filtration systems, factories and industry. Chemical will be involved in giving the mechanical engineers specific requirements. We need 400W of heat transfered for this process, figure it out.

You get a degree in engineering you can work in Infrastructure. Even Aero with their advanced structural analysis background can work in that industry.

Answer 4

What you're describing is multidisciplinary. No one engineer does all those different kinds of work. Some would be civil, some electrical and probably some chemical.