Civil Engineering encompasses a wide range of planning, design, and construction activities dealing with bridges, highways, transportation, water supply, fluid flow, water reclamation, and geotechnical engineering problems. Main parts of studies are on environmental engineering, urban planning, design of infrastructures and disaster control. Physical, chemical, and biological processes are applied to environmental problems of prevention and remediation, while numerical simulations and analytical mechanics in addition to physics and mathematics are used to solve problems on design of structures and materials and disaster control. Many information processing techniques and statistical approaches are necessary for urban planning as well as environmental engineering.

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering shares the research and education tasks with Graduate School of Environmental Studies (GSES), Graduate School of Information Science (GSIS), International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), and Center for Northeast Asian Studies (CNEAS).

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has a number of research projects funded by national and local agencies, private industries, and as part of national and international consortia. These research projects give both graduate and undergraduate students invaluable opportunities to work along-side professionals on real-world problems. In addition, many research projects are utilized to provide state-of-the-art training facilities that are often beyond the reach of government-supported institution.