brief description
A modern infrastructure is one of the most important requirements for a successful and efficient economy. Egypt is facing to the typical problems of countries with a fast population development: growing cities which need a powerful infrastructure to ensure supply and disposal. The main problem is the coordination of the continuously increasing traffic volume. Comming investments in the development of the infrastructure have to be distinguished in investments to change and improve the existing infrastructure and investments in the further future developments to meet the requirements of current and future needs.
To reach these goals it might be ensured to work efficiently as possible with the highest quality as possible in the shortest time. Increasing of efficiency and quality of the road design branch can be reached by the integration of modern IT-technologies. IT-technology gives new perspectives to the Egyptian road engineering branch: 1.) Design of traffic facilities on a high level meeting international standards. 2.) Expedited design and approval process. 3.) Project management and progress control to ensure high quality and low costs. 4.) Management of infrastructure data as base for future orientated decisions about development of the road network. 5.) Objective and economic planning of maintenance measures.
The project will contribute to these necessary changes by the integration of modern IT-technology in the field of road engineering education at Egyptian Universities. Updating the education of future engineers is the most appropriate approach to improve the potential of Egypt to meet the requirements of a powerful and modern society. Within the project it is planned to integrate IT-technologies into the existing curricula. That means the existing structure of lessons, lectures and seminars will be enhanced.
The members of the consortium are universities from Europe and Egyptian. The participation of the Egyptian Ministry for Higher Education is assured since Egyptian universities participating in the programme are public ones. As European universities the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) and the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences,Vienna (BOKU), from the Egyptian side the Ain Shams University Cairo and the Minia University, upper Egypt, are involved. Furthermore the individual experts Mrs. Eng. Kiefel (Kiefel & Partner, Germany), Mr. Eng. Hamada (Arab Constractors, Egypt), Mr. Prof. Koren (Szechenyi Istvan University, Hungaria), and Mr. Eng. Al-Hennawi (Ministry of Transportation, Egypt) will monitor external the project.
The project is structured into four main activities:
1.) Current State Analysis,
2.) Development of updated curriculum,
3.) Advanced training in IT-technologies, and
4.) Realisation of updated curriculum.
Due to the life of project (2 years) the intention of this project is not the development of a complete new curriculum, furthermore the existing curriculum will be extended and updated by the education in modern IT-technologies for road engineering.
With the updated curricula the Egyptian universities have the possibility to introduce modern IT-technologies in their own education at first but finally the alumni will join the market with improvement IT-knowledge. The improved knowledge increase not only the efficiency of the road engineering branch within Egypt, it also improves the competitiveness of the Egyptian building industry in a global context.