Investigation of the diversity of engineering disciplines

The word engineering is used in various contexts and for a broad range of disciplines. But there is no common understanding for engineering disciplines. It is not clear which disciplines exist, the scope of disciplines is not defined, and there is no common naming conventions for engineering disciplines. This paper shall promote the common understanding of engineering by an investigation on the diversity of engineering disciplines. It is analyzed which engineering disciplines appear in publications and which disciplines are referenced by professional engineering associations and companies or by universities and educational associations. This work shows that the range of engineering disciplines is evolving. Based on our research we created a list of more than 200 engineering disciplines and examined the used names for the different disciplines. A final frequency analysis examines the frequency of occurrence of certain terms. Based on this analysis the disciplines were ranked. It is shown that disciplines are evolving, that there are some major disciplines, and that newer disciplines are on the advance.