It is evident that numerous ongoing processes, including globalization and technical progress, imply significant changes in the sphere of civil engineering. New challenges, which are imposed by the varying working conditions, demand a new definition of a civil engineer. It could be hardly denied that the fundamentals of the profession, such as planning, designing, and maintaining various infrastructures, will continue to remain the core aspects of a civil engineer’s work. However, new responsibilities emerge from the evolving technology, and they significantly shape the image of the contemporary world. The research by Liu et al. (2015) explores the questions of system integration, which immensely influences global sustainability. This paper will reflect on the ideas from the research, aiming to retrieve possible implications for current civil engineering practices and decision-making. First of all, it is essential to observe the core idea of the research: the authors claim that numerous challenges for global sustainability are studied and managed separately in the majority of cases (Liu et al. 2015, p. 1258832). They argue that there is a considerable necessity for developing a holistic approach to the problem, which would integrate various aspects of human and natural systems, and thus it would produce an opportunity for creating sustainability solutions (Liu et al. 2015, p. 1258832). It is stated that the development of systems integration frameworks would help to understand the broader context of many current problems to influence more profound decision-making in numerous spheres, including civil engineering. Further, the authors dwell upon describing several examples of effective implementation of an integrational approach to various problems. For example, it is mentioned that the application of environmental footprint and human-nature nexus frameworks to the issue of biofuels resulted in retrieving unexpected impacts of its use (Liu et al. 2015). However, the authors observe that even though considerable progress is made in developing integrational frameworks, there is a significant demand for improvement. It is possible to observe that of the better policies, which are proposed in the research and which could be applied to the sphere of civil engineering, is the development and use of new tools for overcoming various barriers (Liu et al. 2015). It is mentioned that agent-based models could be successfully used in estimating and predicting the outcomes, caused by interdependent factors, such as the developing new infrastructures and changes in the environment. It is evident that modern civil engineers are capable of creating new electronic tools for processing significant amounts of data. Consequently, the authors suggest that the findings from integrational research can be translated into various policies and practices (Liu et al. 2015). One can hardly deny that civil engineering has an immense impact on the environment since it significantly affects several nature systems. Therefore, it is essential to consider any possible changes that could be implemented in the current civil engineering practices. Incorporating the studies of the long-term effects of developing new infrastructures on the condition of the environmental systems would help to d