NASA's Mission to Planet Earth: Will Civil Engineering Reap Benefits?

The U.S. government plans to spend approximately $10 billion through NASA's Mission to Planet Earth to better understand global change. The program will produce enormous data sets of physical and biological parameters of the Earth. These data sets are being collected for scientific research, but can have great utility in engineering applications, notably those that fall within the province of civil engineering. To date, however, civil engineering interests are not represented in the program that represents the largest single project in the earth sciences ever undertaken. In the absence of strong civil engineering participation, the data produced will likely not be collected or formatted in the manner needed to ease use. Professional societies should exert a strong effort to ensure that the Mission to Planet Earth both profits from existing expertise and best serves the needs of civil engineering.