Bulletin 6 – Context of Classical Universities in Brazil & Changing Times

Knowledge about the most effective ways a university contributes to Society is a challenge for Federal Universities, especially for older ones, which have become accustomed, mainly to scientific production and have not developed new formats of social, technical, and technological products. Research groups share lines of research without the possibility of dynamic changes in relation to current demands.

For example, when talking about climate change, focus only on technological products without discussing, in an integrated way, how to operationalize and build strategies. This is a pure scientific vision, very good for classic and specific publications on so-called hard engineering, but not very useful for the transformations carried out by Society.

So, based on my experience in Chemical Engineering (PPEQ), Construction (PPEC), and Industrial (PEI), all of them so far, they don't really know how to work in multidisciplinary ways. Some, such as Industrial Engineering, discuss this opening but do not know how to execute it, focusing on scientific productions and due to being mainly composed of classical engineering, they are unable to act in a multidisciplinary way.

One case refers to the Postgraduate Industrial Engineering (PEI) positioning itself against research in mega-event engineering, this situation indicates the contamination of the objectives of classical engineering, such as chemistry and mechanics, over more managerial, more multidisciplinary engineering such as of production.

An important example of multidisciplinary refers to development in human reliability that aims to reduce losses in the production process and ends up requiring the formation of research teams from different origins. At GRODIN we have had long experience “mixing” engineers, lawyers, psychologists, linguists, geographers, and firefighters. Among Engineers, production, chemical, mechanical, and petroleum.

Civil Construction Engineering remains fixed on construction elements or construction processes but does not act in currently demanding areas, organizational resilience, improvement in critical tasks, analysis of structural risks in large constructions, analysis of occupational risks, and the relationship with human factors in construction. Another underdeveloped discussion is the scientific investigation into accidents in buildings and their social consequences.

On the other hand, Chemical Engineering responds to demands from research agencies with developments in the energy area, such as biodiesel, around processes such as green hydrogen, in oil production with a high level of automation, transforming production units into uninhabited, but the chemical engineering forgets to include human factors when analyzing 15-day long shift work and related social relationships.

So classical engineering such as Chemical and Civil follow the scientific line and forget that these innovations must be transformed into operations and that the future risk of loss events (materials, accidents) during their operation, not only in the project, must be lower than the current risk.

Often, erroneously, it is believed that control is carried out through psychologists in the selection process, and administrators in the construction of policies, due to the lack of practice of multidisciplinary. The result is that it is not possible to transform concepts into practices. This is despite a high level of automation to ensure safety and production. The scale of production increases and managers forget to invest in communication at work, causing, in a strange way, at least from the perspective of classical engineering, a process accident that affects large-scale production, promoting large releases of toxic gases. And now?

There has long been talk of integrated work at the PEEX Research, Teaching and Extension University, including the possibility of developing technological services resulting from applied research. Lately there has also been talk about the integration of these themes with DI institutional development, that is, the production of results that allow the construction of action centers with a positive image in society. Unfortunately, the discourse does not result in practice, generating hybrid formats, which try to do all the things proposed, and generating anomalies that sometimes make it difficult to implement this tripod in Brazil. We want to do everything, all disciplines, but they know how, because we don't know how to integrate science around results for society.

This difficulty in performing PEEX-DI becomes even more complicated in dynamic and hostile environments with external restrictions. These external threats change their configuration over time and have multiple specificities and issues.

The area of climate change includes challenges in the availability of energy and water and are closely related to the natural stress of species in the biome. On the other hand, geopolitics influences the economy through product prices and business formats, threatening the stability of material supplies.

Social changes generate diverse conflicts that operate in the workplace and in managerial and strategic areas. Engineering needs to understand the influence of social conflicts in the world of work in production and services. Further complicating the vision of how product manufacturing and energy generation facilities will operate in the future is the use of the internet and the network in today's world. Decisions based on the flow of information in the cloud bring the risks of cyber piracy and at the same time, the existence of virtualism brings challenges in the constitution of “socio-economic and affective utility in society, in the economy and at work.

Ufa! Does Engineering know this? Or do we need to unite with thoughts and sciences that definitively leave the control of physical-chemical phenomena?

The risks arising from these poorly addressed movements are “unknown” to this entire process, bringing effects such as the appearance of superbugs in the area of biology, such as the creation of fantasies of leaders in geopolitics, such as high underreporting in the world of work... we need work together on this research that, if it doesn't exist, does not insistently lead to failure, interruption, and at some points, disaster with the coming of Black Swan-type events.

Planning for the future continues when the already discussed vision of sustainability is added with the new vision of resilience, today in the philosophical area and which needs to be transformed into strategic intelligence for business and services for Society.

Conclusion:

The culture of companies and geopolitical units with a preventionist approach is possible through the implementation of safeguards based on multidisciplinary and interdisciplinarity. Academic activities that include research, teaching, and PEEX extension must include multiple sciences. Here at our University, UFBA, Engineering only talks to Engineering, it does not talk to Psychology, Sociology, Administration or Psychoanalysis. Will we have a future this way?

In a period in which we live with completely new situations, new dangers, and risks of impactful events, it is necessary to accelerate the development of products to serve society in social, economic and cultural activities.

The creation and evolution of new scientific concepts are important, but, with the emergence of urgent risks, Society requires more accelerated elaborations, thus, the inductive method (concepts arising from empiricism) at certain times must overlap the deductive method (production progressive development of new concepts), scientific thinking must make room for extensionism and the University must assume its role in this transformation.

Universities begin to move between Scientific Development, mixed with Technological solutions, to the solution of intense problems, with immediate and acute demands, the University must be an offerer of solutions that facilitate the governance of the State and Municipalities.

Professional Masters and Doctors, Researchers for Technological Development in the extension format is probably the most suitable modality to work in the current Demands of Society. It becomes easier to meet this urgent and emerging demand for products applicable in Cities and Industries. These modalities are little encouraged and developed at UFBA (Universidade Federal da Bahia) because it is built based on the scientific world and without effective interfaces with Society and the Economy.

The evaluation criteria for research professors are still trapped in the scientific world, mainly within classical universities such as UFBA and mainly within hard engineering areas such as Chemistry and Civil Engineering.

The number of Courses with a profile closer to Technical and Technological Solutions and the number of CNPq researchers focused on this subject is small, when compared to the MAs (Academics) and DAs and classic CNPq Scientific Researchers at UFBA. The rules and culture of pure science restrict this change, it is necessary to transform the minds of research leaders, acculturating their precepts and redoing their practices with mandatory demands for deliveries to society, in a practical way, and following the dynamic demands of current threats.

The current proposal to develop the Center for Preparation for Crisis Situations is based on practical issues, suggesting new concepts based on Vygotsky's Vision (pseudo-concept) and testing, with new disciplines and research, the perception of undergraduate and graduate students. postgraduate studies in addition to the perception of institutions external to the University, with a focus on Process Safety (in Industry) and Public Safety (in Contingency Control Services).