Wenchuan 5.12 Earthquake School Buildings Collapsed On Engineering Ethics In China

The ethic problem in the engineering practice is one of the societal foci nowadays. Underlying it are manifold backgrounds, namely technical background, commercial background, professional background, social background, etc. as well as the interactive relationship between these backgrounds. In the western countries where modern engineering is relatively advanced, particularly in the US, the study of engineering ethics has already taken form and scored encouraging results. However, in China, the study of engineering ethnics is in infancy and key issues are yet to be agreed upon in academia.That Wenchuan 5.12 extra-intense earthquake has resulted in the collapse of school buildings and taken lives of many students has drawn widespread attention of people from all walks of life to the quality of engineering. Taking the case study of the collapse of school buildings in Wenchuan earthquake as the study object, the thesis examines the difficulty that engineering ethics faces in the engineering practices. It also analyzes such issues as responsibility and power, risks and safety, honesty and fraudulence, etc. in engineering ethics based on the sorting out of the causes for the collapse of the school buildings in the quake, such as policy-making and planning, designing and constructing, and operating and updating, etc. In discussing the engineering ethic issue, the thesis is aimed at summarizing the lessons drawn from the incident so as to better deal with both the future inevitable natural disasters and the possible great disastrous engineering accidents in the process of economic development to prevent human beings from injury caused by inferior engineering quality.Through the analysis of the ethic engineering in the wenchuan earthquake case, the thesis attempts to propose the conception of systematic construction of the engineering ethics in China. Based upon the predecessors'study, the author summarizes the measures needed to be taken to systemize the engineering ethnics, namely learning from ancient ethics and techniques, macro-improvement in engineering ethics, and micro-improvement in engineering ethics. Among all of the measures, macro-improvement in engineering ethics largely means that positioning the engineering in the whole society, linking engineering ethics with juridical system, news media, and national basic engineering ethics. Micro-improvement in engineering ethics mainly indicates that engineering ethics should be linked with such aspects as the furthering of education of engineering ethics in polytechnics, the promotion of the professional teams in engineering, the establishment of engineering ethics evaluation committee, the improvement of professional system of registered engineers, and the establishment of the case pool of typical engineering accidents. Through systemization, hopefully the modern engineering activities can be regulated and national awareness of ethics in engineering practice can be strengthened.