Public and Social Problems That Someone Trained in Systems Engineering Can't Solve

For someone trained in systems engineering, few things are harder to watch than something getting ‘clogged up.’ I understand this very well.

I majored in environmental engineering at university. When you first hear that name, is it hard to picture exactly what it involves?

It isn't as specific as the names of other departments, like electronic engineering, computer engineering, or chemical engineering. Those are broad fields too, but their names give you a rough idea of what they can do and which industries or careers they relate to.

‘Environment,’ on the other hand, is such a big, broad word. It feels clear and yet not quite clear. It seems connected to everything, but it's hard to say exactly what it means. The boundaries are a little fuzzy.

That's understandable, especially ten or twenty years ago, when people may have found it even harder to grasp. The industry was developing relatively slowly and hadn't attracted much attention. Things are different these days, twenty years on: people are paying more attention to environmental issues, and environmental engineering and the environmental-protection industry in China have entered a period of rapid development. This has largely been driven by rapid population, economic, and urban growth, and the resulting pressure on environmental technologies and infrastructure, which has pushed the industry to develop quickly.

OK. I've wandered off. Back to the point.

Environmental engineering is, at its core, a form of systems engineering. Although it looks like an independent specialization, the knowledge and technologies it uses actually span several technical fields, including chemical, physical, and biological engineering.

In other words, environmental engineering is more like an integration of multiple technologies, or an integrated application of foundational sciences and technologies, with the ultimate purpose of solving environmental problems. Its branches include water treatment, solid-waste treatment, air-pollution control, soil-pollution remediation, and clean energy. Almost every branch draws on knowledge and technologies from the engineering fields mentioned above.

So an environmental engineer's work is more about selecting the right specialized technologies or technical approaches for a particular problem, combining them according to the designed treatment processes and stages into a large system that can work together, and then tuning its parameters to achieve the best operating conditions and output.

An environmental engineer is, fundamentally, a designer or builder of systems.

The emphasis is on optimizing the system as a whole and its output. It isn't about designing every treatment stage or component with the most advanced machinery and technology. It's about choosing the most suitable methods and technologies so that, when combined, they deliver the best overall treatment result.

In short, optimizing the whole system and keeping it flowing smoothly matters most; optimizing an individual stage or node is not the most important thing. We need to minimize ‘sticking points,’ reduce how often bottlenecks occur at individual nodes or across the system, reduce the likelihood and cost of downtime, and lower operating and maintenance costs.

So someone with a systems-engineering mindset really dislikes seeing anything ‘clogged up’ and wants to fix it. Their instinct is that everything in the world should move and flow smoothly according to some set of rules; it cannot and should not get ‘stuck.’ Whenever they see congestion or a blockage, it feels as uncomfortable as ten thousand ants crawling over their heart.

I've realized I'm exactly that kind of person. Whether it's a process at work or any kind of ‘flow’ in daily life, when something isn't moving smoothly, it easily makes me uncomfortable and anxious. I can't help wanting to change it.

Sometimes, when I encounter this kind of ‘blockage,’ I start thinking about some rather odd questions.

Take a simple situation. Walking through a metro station, you're bound to encounter people moving in different directions and at different speeds. In the station's limited space, these mismatched rhythms and this disorder create a kind of ‘congestion’ in the natural flow of people.

It's most frustrating during the morning rush hour. Everyone is in a hurry and, in theory, following a familiar, repeated route. Yet you always run into people who aren't sure where they're going, or who are hesitating and looking for directions, blocking your way and forcing you to slow down and go around them. Every slowdown and detour—and every person doing it—affects the efficiency of normal movement and makes it more chaotic. Whenever this happens, I feel a little uncomfortable.

If it happens in metro stations, it must also happen in railway stations, airports, public transport, and other similar settings. So there should be something these situations have in common to investigate.

At the time I wondered: is the station poorly managed? Is it failing to guide people along the best routes? Are the signs not obvious enough? Are there too few station staff serving passengers? None of these, really. The station is already doing what it can.

So it isn't—or isn't equivalent to—what we'd call a systems problem.

Yet at the same time, I wondered: perhaps this systems-thinking instinct can't be applied to public and social problems. They contain both ‘clear’ order and hidden disorder. They involve randomness, and their ‘collaborating parts’ are people, not machines. People's actions are inherently uncertain.

What could explain it, then? Economics or marketing might influence people's behavior, I suppose, but they don't seem to cover everything. Sociology or public administration, perhaps? Does anyone study this?

Anyway, I find it quite interesting.

And I don't really understand it either. If you happen to, you're welcome to tell me.

From a kid who always has lots of odd questions