2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The objective of this current work is to align professional education with the systemic demands of Planetary Health as described in the most recent updated Body of Knowledge for Environmental Engineering (EEBoK2) published by the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (AAEES) who hold the responsibility for defining the profession of environmental engineering. This paper addresses the continuous need to evaluate and update the EEBoK in response to emerging needs including climate change, growth in generative Artificial Intelligence, and continued growth in our understanding of social contracts. In particular, the ongoing work of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s project entitled, “Education for Thriving in a Changing Climate," offers a lens to consider the future of the EEBoK. Building upon prior published literature that cited the Grand Challenges and Opportunities of Environmental Engineering (2019), the objective of this current work is to align future versions of the EEBoK with the call to hold paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public and the planet.

Relevance and Methodology: A continuous process of testing and improvement is a stated purpose of the EEBoK. The analysis in this current work employs a Large Language Model plus Human-in-the-Loop (LLM-HitL) approach. First, multiple reports were produced using a single prompt designed to produce a thematic analysis of provided data inputs. Second, a meta-analysis of the reports was produced. Third, a human compared the results of the six reports with the results of the meta-analysis to confirm validity. Fourth, original data inputs were searched to determine the rank abundance of the presence of the human verified results, and specific instances supporting the human verified results were identified in the original data inputs. The data input included a corpus of peer-reviewed literature from 2019 through June 2024, which cited the Grand Challenges and Opportunities in Environmental Engineering. This approach directly supports the updating of the outcomes to reflect the peer-reviewed literature.

Major Findings and Impact: We present actionable language for a future refresh of the EEBoK, which consider five areas. These include: 1) reconfirmation of the current 18 outcomes; 2) explicit consideration of environmental justice as part of societal impact and environmental policy; 3) explicit consideration of generative Artificial Intelligence as part of computational approaches; 4) the urgency to consider exceedance of planetary boundaries, including climate change; and 5) the expansion of multi-disciplinary teams to include “more than” adjacent scientists. The use of LLM-HitL described in this article provides a template for other professional societies seeking to integrate the results of peer-reviewed scholarship into updates of bodies of knowledge. This demonstrates the leadership of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists to steward important aspects of the engineering body of knowledge, writ large, including topics such as professional ethics and planetary sustainability.