Back in June 1868, a small group of Victorian gentlemen gathered in London with a very important mission: to preserve and propagate the very best professional practice and ethical behaviour among surveyors.

One of the inevitable consequences of the world’s spiralling rate of urbanisation is that people are arriving in cities faster than homes can be built for them. What happens next should be obvious to anyone with even the most basic grasp of the laws of supply and demand.

As cities become nodes of a global network, it’s been the largest, most outward-facing metropolises that have really benefited, leaving nearby smaller cities playing catch-up. So, could a cohesive mega-regional policy – particularly joined-up transport policies – help to distribute growth more fairly?

The dramatic fall in the price of offshore wind power underlines how the world is undergoing an energy revolution. Meanwhile, energy grids are becoming smart and responsive, nuclear power is changing fast, and households can store more energy than ever before, placing them in more control.

In this, the first edition of Modus in RICS’ 150th celebratory year, we case our eye to the future and ask: where will self-driving cars take us?

Rare-earth metals are found in everything from mobile phones to ground-breaking cancer treatments. The rise in demand is taking us to the seabed, where some of the greatest concentrations of rare-earth metals are to be found. But the stakes are high: deposits are hard to access, procedures are largely unproven at this scale and the capital required is huge – not to mention the environmental risks.

Anyone nearing retirement today is likely to have seen some serious changes in the workplace. Computers (remember the days when ‘the’ office PC had to be booked in advance?) have made us responsible for our own admin. Partition walls have come crashing down as we move to open-plan workspaces. And email has turned the overflowing in-tray into the overflowing in-box.

Meet the new, most important person in city hall: the Chief Risk Officer. Working across departments, these 'resilience tsars' bang heads together to learn about the particular threats that their city faces, and lead the development of a suitable resilience strategy.

More than ever in this shrinking world, a country’s economic growth is dependent on strong airport infrastructure, so if they are to thrive, it’s vital that they plan and deliver airports that are fit for the future. But how can we build that infrastructure in time?

With new technologies emerging and transforming working practices, it’s inevitable that the skills and aptitudes required by the industry will change. But the questions are… how, and when?

The school where you and your children were educated has been at the heart of your community for 30 years. And now it’s been given two weeks to vacate the premises – because someone else is claiming that they own the land it stands on.

Despite efforts to promote a less adversarial culture in construction, disputes are becoming more protracted. Last year’s Arcadis survey of global construction disputes shows they are taking longer to resolve – lasting an average of 13 months, compared to nine in 2010.

Our world is driven by data. From Google using your search history to return better results, to the complex financial transactions that are protected via blockchain, it shapes, governs and influences every corner of our lives.

In our everyday lives, most of us find it relatively easy to judge and conform to appropriate ethical standards, but put any of us into an organisation or company, and everything changes. This is particularly true in business, where leaders, managers and employees face conflicting incentives, messages and pressures from multiple stakeholders.

Spending millions on a thing that cannot be moved, no matter what happens, has to be the ultimate statement of confidence in the future. So when it comes to the built environment, confidence is absolutely critical. In fact, without it, we’d all be living in tents.

After a turbulent 12 months that’s seen the UK decide to leave the EU and the US elect the controversial Donald Trump as President, we’re capping off the year with a highly appropriate theme: disruption.

As we become more and more used to seeing flooding events every year, climate scientists are starting to talk about a ‘new normal’ of frequent floods.

Across the world, cities are turning into megacities at lightning pace, and in turn compromises are being made in terms of living space and conditions, zoning and infrastructure. To avoid a dystopian urban nightmare, what forms of leadership do we need in cities … and where will this leadership come from?

The profession is facing a demographic timebomb. With 25% of members reaching retirement age in the next 10 years, and immediate skills shortages in areas such as quantity surveying, teaching the next generation of surveyors has never been more important or urgent.