College student holding her robotic toy at robotics classroom at school

Connected Engineering

Warehouse with bags of discarded materials
Failure Mode 3

Failure Mode 3

Data is vital for good decisions and helping people. It gives real-time information about natural resources and human well-being, allowing us to send help where it’s most needed.

By using new tools like satellite images, digital twins, and AI, engineering can become faster and smarter, helping us achieve global goals.

But there’s a problem: not everyone has equal access to data. This creates a gap between those who are informed and those who aren’t. Many people are left out due to language, poverty, lack of education, limited technology, or discrimination. Our goal is to make engineering’s data and software more useful for the Global South and reduce the global differences in data access and training.

This failure mode asks:

How can engineering help make data and smart systems available worldwide to fight climate change?

How can our network create connections and offer training to use this global data effectively?

Rural houses with water tanks on the roofs

Connected Engineering ensures data and knowledge are globally accessible to address shared challenges.

Encarni Medina-Lopez
Dr Encarni Medina-Lopez
FeME Director and Lead
The University of Edinburgh
School of Engineering
Kirsty Pringle

Dr Kirsty Pringle

Specialist
The University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre