Call for Mini-Symposia and Special Sessions
Abstract & Paper Submission

MS 01 – Monitoring of Structures for Informed Decision Making

Alfred Strauss

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
Vienna, Austria

Dan M. Frangopol

Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA, USA

Civil engineers are facing the challenge of managing aging infrastructure under tight budgetary as well as operational constraints. A qualified assessment of new and existing structures is essential to optimally allocate the limited resources available for asset management. A profound knowledge on the condition of a structure is the necessary basis for deciding on actions which can be taken to guarantee a safe use and operation of the structure within the planned technical lifetime or for prolonging the technical lifetime of the structure. There have been significant advances in the development of technologies for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), however such technologies are at present only limited integrated in the assessment of existing structures.

This Mini-Symposium (MS) addresses the problem of decision making in the management of deteriorating infrastructure. Such decision making should consider all relevant uncertainties, and exploiting the potential for profound knowledge on the structural condition as provided by SHM technologies. In particular this MS will focus on (1) developing a framework that allows assessing existing structures by means of a decision making tool that takes into account monitoring information and (2) determining and optimizing the value of monitoring over the lifetime of structures.

MS 02 – Artificial Intelligence-Based Life-Cycle Management of Infrastructure Systems

You Dong

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong, China

Dan M. Frangopol

Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA, USA

Xiaoming Lei

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong, China

Civil infrastructure systems play a critical role in continued economic prosperity and preserving our quality of life. Due to operational loads, environmental erosion, and extreme events, the deteriorating infrastructure systems will reduce the functionality and service life. Infrastructure owners encounter great challenges in efficiently allocating funds to preserve and maintain their ageing structures with the consideration of safety, social, economic, and environmental impacts. Life-Cycle Management (LCM) provides a holistic perspective to understanding the performance, risk, sustainability and cost of infrastructure assets. Recently, with the help of fast-increasing artificial intelligence and field measurements, civil infrastructures have created vast volumes of data that imply structural behaviour and multi-level physical mechanisms.

This Mini-Symposium will provide a forum for international experts and researchers to discuss current breakthroughs in the artificial intelligence-based assessment and management of civil infrastructure systems in a life-cycle context. Authors working on research related to risk, resilience and sustainability-informed management of infrastructure systems under the effects of deterioration, hazards, and climate change using monitoring and inspection data and artificial intelligence-based infrastructure maintenance are encouraged to submit abstracts.

MS 03 – Life-Cycle Redundancy, Robustness, and Resilience Indicators for Aging Structures and Infrastructure Systems under Multiple Hazards

Fabio Biondini

Politecnico di Milano
Milan, Italy

Dan M. Frangopol

Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA, USA

Structural systems, due to their inherent vulnerability, are at risk from aging, fatigue and deterioration processes due to aggressive chemical attacks and other physical damage mechanisms. The detrimental effects of these phenomena can lead over time to unsatisfactory structural performance under service loadings or accidental actions and extreme events, such as natural hazards and man-made disasters. The exposure to combined effects of discrete and continuous damaging events pose a major challenge to the field of structural engineering. The classical time-invariant structural design criteria and methodologies need to be revised to account for a proper modeling of the structural system over its entire life-cycle by taking into account the effects of deterioration processes, time-variant loadings, and maintenance and repair interventions under uncertainty. Despite these needs and recent research advances, life-cycle concepts are not yet explicitly addressed in structural design codes. Moreover, the level of structural performance is generally specified with reference to structural safety and reliability. However, when aging and deterioration are considered, the evaluation of the system performance should account for additional probabilistic indicators aimed to provide a comprehensive description of the life-cycle structural resources, such us redundancy, robustness and resilience. Based on these considerations and following the successful mini-symposia organized at IALCCE2016, IALCCE2018, and IALCCE 2020, the purpose of this IALCCE2023 mini-symposium is to present principles, concepts, methods, and strategies for assessing the life-cycle risk, reliability, redundancy, robustness and resilience of deteriorating structures and infrastructure systems under multiple hazards, with emphasis on the interaction between seismic and environmental hazards.

Mini‐Symposium organized on behalf of the SEI/ASCE Technical Council on Life‐Cycle Performance, Safety, Reliability and Risk of Structural Systems, Task Group 2 on Reliability-based Performance Indicators for Structural Systems.

MS 04 – Vibration-Based Structural Health Monitoring, Damage Identification and Residual Lifetime Estimation

Edwin Reynders

KU Leuven
Leuven, Belgium

Geert Lombaert

KU Leuven
Leuven, Belgium

Eleni Chatzi

ETH Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland

Costas Papadimitirou

University of Thessaly
Thessaly, Greece

A main goal of vibration-based structural health monitoring and damage identification is assess structural condition via vibration signatures. For civil structures response-only data is often used due to difficulties associated with forced excitation of large structures. This followed by inference of grey/black-box models, or updating of physics-based models. This mini-symposium welcomes novel contributions on vibration-based structural health monitoring, damage identification and parameter, input and load estimation, using black-box as well as physics-based models. Relevant topics include linear and nonlinear system identification, parameter and state estimation, model updating and correlation, optimal experiment design, and the exploration of novel sensing techniques.

MS 05 – Life-Cycle Performance Assessment of Civil Engineering Systems

Mitsuyoshi Akiyama

Waseda University
Tokyo, Japan

Dan M. Frangopol

Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA, USA

Hiroshi Matsuzaki

National Defense Academy
Yokosuka, Japan

Despite extensive studies on life-cycle performance assessment of structure and infrastructure, a number of issues still remain unclear. One of the main intricacies is the uncertainty associated with the physical parameters involved in the problem. Because of the presence of uncertainties, long-term structural performance must be predicted based on probabilistic concepts and methods, and life-cycle reliability assessment methodologies must be established.
The aim of this Mini-Symposium is to attract state-of-the-art papers that deal with the use of advanced computational and/or experimental techniques for evaluating the life-cycle performance of aging structures in an aggressive environment. For these structures, multiple environmental and mechanical stressors lead to deterioration of structural performance. Such deterioration will reduce their service life and increase the life-cycle cost associated with maintenance actions. This Mini-Symposium covers current theoretical and experimental efforts made in the assessment and future prediction of performance, maintenance and strengthening of existing structures in an aggressive environment. The following topics would be addressed:

– Long-term deterioration model of structural performance
– Visual inspection or advanced structural health monitoring techniques
– Life-cycle analysis of aging structures based on reliability approach
– Updating the reliability of existing structures by incorporating inspection results
– Related topics with laboratory or field experiments on aging structures
– Machine learning approach to life-cycle performance assessment of aging structures

MS 06 – Performance, Safety, and Cost of Civil Infrastructure in a Life-Cycle Context

Yaohan Li

Hong Kong Metropolitan University
Hong Kong, China

Peng Yuan

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong, China

You Dong

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong, China

Dan M. Frangopol

Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA, USA

Civil infrastructure systems are vulnerable to deterioration and extreme events due to environmental exposure and multiple hazards over their lifetime. In recent decades, adverse environmental conditions and climate change have also resulted in a severe negative impact on engineering structures. Therefore, enhancing the safety, condition, and resilience of aging infrastructure has become a major concern globally. In particular, the life-cycle approach under uncertainty for civil engineering systems can be a key solution to address these challenges. This Mini-Symposium aims to provide a forum for researchers to present state-of-the-art research results and future trends in life-cycle performance and cost of civil infrastructure. The main topics to be presented are: (1) advances in risk-based and maintenance cost estimation, (2) uncertainty modeling, (3) reliability-based performance analysis, and (4) performance and cost assessment under deterioration, extreme events, and climate change.

MS 07 – Non-Deterministic Model Updating for Structural Health Monitoring of Existing Structures

Masaru Kitahara

Leibniz University Hannover
Hannover, Germany

Matteo Broggi

Leibniz University Hannover
Hannover, Germany

Michael Beer

Leibniz University Hannover
Hannover, Germany

Takeshi Kitahara

Kanto Gakuin University
Yokohama, Japan

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) aims to identify deterioration in existing structures at early stages, which will benefit their life-cycle management. Model updating has been developed as a key technique for SHM, where the parameters or the numerical model itself are calibrated to tune its prediction close to the measurements. However, inevitable uncertainties arise in both the experiments and modeling, which leads to the necessity of non-deterministic approaches for treating the uncertainties. This Mini-Symposium is dedicated to gathering experts from both academia and industries to showcase the latest development on the uncertainty treatment for model updating and SHM. A non-exhaustive list includes stochastic/interval model updating, mixed aleatory and epistemic uncertainty modeling, uncertainty quantification, and data assimilation.

MS 08 – Deterioration Modeling of Concrete, Rebar, Steel and Bond Performance

Xiangling Gao

Tongji University
Shanghai, China

Xiaodan Ren

Tongji University
Shanghai, China

Jie Li

Tongji University
Shanghai, China

Concrete, reinforcing bar and steel, as major building materials, have been widely used in structural and infrastructure engineering. With the service life increase, carbonation and crack of concrete, corrosion of reinforcing bars and steel, debonding of rebar and concrete, and debonding of section steel and concrete induced the mechanical performance to deteriorate. To this end, models to describe the deterioration of concrete, rebar, section steel and bond performance during structural life-cycle play increasingly important roles in the engineering design. Those who have been working on related fields are cordially invited to exchange their ideas and research outcome in this mini-symposium.

MS 09 – Recent Development IoT- and ICT-Based Infrastructure Inspection and Management

Chul-Woo Kim

Kyoto University
Kyoto, Japan

Vasilis Sarhosis

University of Leeds
Leeds, UK

Mohammad Noori

California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, CA, USA

Yi Zhang

Tsinghua University
Beijing, China

Although adoption of structural health monitoring (SHM) approaches is on the rise, despite significant research activities, SHM technologies have not yet been widely accepted by working level officials especially those in infrastructure inspection and management; this is caused by few satisfactory results in real-world applications. However, recent fast-growing technologies on IoT and ICT have immense potential to be incorporated into the successful real-world application of SHM to the infrastructure inspection and maintenance. The scope of this mini-symposium is to bring together experts, academics and practicing engineers concerned with the various aspects of SHM incorporated with technologies of IoT and ICT.

MS 10 – Influence of Retrofit Decisions on Life-Cycle Analysis of Structural Systems

Jayadipta Ghosh

IIT Bombay
Mumbai, India

Fabio Freddi

University College London
London, UK

Natural hazards in the form of earthquakes, coastal flooding, and tsunamis along with lifetime exposure to adverse environments have continued to threaten the adequate functioning of civil engineering systems. While innovative retrofitting techniques continue to emerge for enhanced structural performance, their feasibility needs to be assessed on the basis of life-cycle metrics such as economy, sustainability, and environmental risks. This mini-symposium invites contributions towards the assessment of structural retrofit strategies based on a life-cycle perspective. The scope of the session encompasses vulnerability assessment, risk analysis, and propagation and quantification of uncertainty along the useful service life of retrofitted structures.

MS 11 – Life-Cycle Asset Management and the Complexity of Socio-Environmental-Technical Transitions

Andreas Hartmann

University of Twente
Twente, The Netherlands

Marcel Hertogh

Delft University of Technology
Delft, The Netherlands

Jaap Bakker

Rijskwaterstaat
Utrecht, The Netherlands

Han Roebers

Province Noord-Holland
Haarlem,  The Netherlands

In the forthcoming decades many objects in transport infrastructure networks will come to the end of their technical, economical or functional lifespan. These assets were designed and built under social, technological and environmental requirements that were substantially different from the ones today, and tomorrow. The renewal programme needs to be integrated in the wider context of transitions such as climate change, biodiversity, inclusiveness and circularity. In this way the challenge is an opportunity to redesign the network. This Mini-Symposium brings together novel insights into the environmental, technical and societal impacts of renewal decisions on the future performance of infrastructure assets. Topics include: integrated design, coupling of functionalities, adaptive engineering and planning, infrastructure performance simulations, circularity assessment, and sustainable procurement.

MS 12 – Advanced Strengthening and Retrofitting Solutions for Existing Concrete Structures

Norbert Randl

Carinthia University of Applied Sciences
Villach, Austria

Edoardo Rossi

Carinthia University of Applied Sciences
Villach, Austria

The ever-increasing number of ageing structures and the awareness of the limit of the exploitable resources, leads to the need of performance-oriented, cost-efficient, and sustainable strengthening and retrofitting solutions. Concrete is the most widely used modern construction material and much effort is put in developing highly efficient solutions. Such solutions may include high-performance and/or eco-friendly materials, user-friendly installation techniques, highly efficient technical approaches, or any other innovative solution that can strongly increase the performance of the existing concrete environment. The mini-symposium aims at gathering the latest state of the art in such a field and disseminate the recent findings.

MS 13 – Reinforced Concrete-to-Concrete Interfaces: Experiments and Modelling

Vasiliki Palieraki

National Technical University of Athens
Athens, Greece

Sara Cattaneo

Politecnico di Milano
Milan, Italy

Interfaces are common in reinforced concrete structures: natural cracks, construction joints, cold joints, etc. The shear resistance of interfaces is crucial for the overall behavior of concrete structures. Even though many tests exist in literature, there are aspects not yet extensively investigated: the effect of interface roughness and roughening techniques, the effect of cyclic loading, the behavior of innovative materials (concrete, reinforcement), the specimens’ size and shape. Furthermore, the modelling of interfaces remains challenging, since interacting mechanisms are involved. The scope of the Mini-Symposium is to represent a meeting point for experts on interfaces, to exchange recent experimental and numerical data.

MS 14 – Coupled Chemical, Physical, and Mechanical Processes in Cementitious Materials for Short- and Long-term Behavior of R.C. and P.C. Structures

Giovanni Di Luzio

Politecnico di Milano
Milan, Italy

Roman Wan-Wendner

Ghent University
Gent, Belgium

Mohammed Alnaggar

Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN, USA

Jan Vorel

Czech Technical University
Prague, Czech Republic

Concrete is still the second most used material in the world after water. No other construction material matches its low cost, ease of processing and versatility. Every day, new developments are introduced to either improve the state of the art of currently used cementitious materials or to mitigate one or more of its downsides either from durability or sustainability points of view. However, to understand and predict the overall time-dependent behavior of cementitious materials, the complex and coupled chemo-physical and mechanical processes that govern their behavior need to be elucidated. Also considering multiple deterioration mechanisms for concrete structures, such as steel corrosion, delayed ettringite formation, alkali-aggregate reaction, freeze- thaw degradation, chemical attacks, etc. This Mini-Symposium will provide a forum for international experts and researchers to discuss recent developments in computational modeling and experimental characterization of coupled chemical, physical and mechanical processes in cementitious materials. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: time-dependent behavior with focus on strength gain, two-way coupling between transport, shrinkage, creep, crack healing, and damage induced by loads or environmental/chemical processes. Materials of interest include: Portland Cement based materials, Ultra-High Performance Concrete, Fiber Reinforced Concrete, Polymer/Geopolymer concrete and all other Eco-friendly cementitious materials with partial to full Portland Cement replacement.

MS 15 – Deconstruction and Reuse of Steel and Lightweight Metal Structures

Markus Kuhnhenne

RWTH Aachen University
Aachen, Germany

Paul Kamrath

Paul Kamrath Ingenieurrückbau GmbH
Dortmund, Germany

The steel industry is responsible for 8% of global and 20% of industrial CO2 emissions, with more than 50% directly attributable to the construction sector. Therefore, the implementation of the principles of the circular economy in steel and lightweight metal construction has a major impact on global climate policy goals and holds great potential to reduce the environmental impact of construction product manufacturing and the dependence on non-renewable raw materials. This symposium will focus on the deconstruction and reuse of existing steel and lightweight metal structures as well as on the design for future reuse.

MS 16 – Optimization of Inspection, Monitoring and Maintenance Strategies for Existing Concrete Structures

Robby Caspeele

Ghent University
Ghent, Belgium

Wouter Botte

Ghent University
Ghent, Belgium

Geert Lombaert

KU Leuven
Leuven, Belgium

Alfred Strauss

University of Natural Resources
and Life Sciences
Vienna, Austria

Inspection, monitoring and maintenance should be effectively planned throughout the life-cycle of concrete structures, e.g. as part of an infrastructure network, to ensure optimum budget allocation and maximum possible service life without adverse effects on the system safety. The optimal intervention times and types can be based on optimization techniques, which is up to date still a challenging task for infrastructure owners or operators. Therefore, this mini-symposium focusses, among others, on the following topics:

  • optimization techniques for inspection and monitoring strategies;
  • optimization and decision making techniques for repair and strengthening;
  • simplified approaches for inspection, monitoring and maintenance scheduling;
  • case studies in which the above mentioned techniques are applied and/or validated.

MS 17 – Assessment of Existing Masonry Arch Bridge Infrastructure

Matthew Gilbert

University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK

Giuliana Cardani

Politecnico di Milano
Milan, Italy

Thomas Boothby

Penn State University
State College, PA, USA

Dario Coronelli

Politecnico di Milano
Milan, Italy

Inspection, monitoring and structural analysis are all important tools in bridge assessment, and can together help ensure that existing masonry arch bridges are appropriately managed and maintained, such that they remain fit for purpose for future generations.
Specifically, information gathered via application of various inspection and monitoring techniques can be used to inform analysis models, enabling current bridge behaviour to be characterised, and, considering anticipated traffic and environmental actions, also allowing future behaviour to be predicted. This in turn allows planning and prioritization of maintenance, repair and strengthening interventions.
This mini-symposium will bring together researchers involved in the inspection, monitoring and/or numerical modelling of masonry arch bridges, with a view to advancing the ways in which these bridges are assessed in the future.

MS 18 – Recent Advance in Seismic Protection Systems: Design, Modeling and Testing Strategies of Traditional and Innovative Solutions

Alberto Pavese

University of Pavia
Pavia, Italy

Marco Furinghetti

University of Pavia
Pavia, Italy

The adoption of strategies for seismic protection of structural systems have become widely spread worldwide in recent decades, thanks to the several research and practical applications, which have led to a better understanding of the effective contribution of the available strategies. More specifically, seismic isolation and energy dissipation devices represent the most suitable solutions for the reduction of structural vulnerability, with a consequent mitigation of the seismic risk. This Mini-Symposium provides a special occasion for researcher, practitioners and device producers to share knowledge about new design procedures, innovative solutions and advanced testing techniques in the field of seismic protection systems.

MS 19 – Safety and Maintenance of Masonry Arch Bridges: Diagnostic, Monitoring, Modelling, Risk Analysis and Retrofit Interventions

Francesco Cannizzaro

University of Catania
Catania, Italy

Nicola Cavalagli

University of Perugia
Perugia, Italy

Corrado Chisari

University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
Aversa, Italy

Bartolomeo Pantò

University of Durham
Durham, UK

Fabrizio Scozzese

University of Camerino
Ascoli Piceno, Italy

Paolo Zampieri

University of Padua
Padua, Italy

Mattia Zizi

University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
Aversa, Italy

Assessment, maintenance and rehabilitation represent some of the major challenges in the management of historical Masonry Arch Bridges (MAB) and influence the life-cycle of the infrastructures. This special session promotes a discussion on these aspects considering applications of existing methodologies and development of novel approaches for Structural Health Monitoring, diagnosis, damage detection and modelling, vulnerability assessment (including simplified and detailed numerical modelling) and risk analysis of masonry arch bridges, with respect to any relevant source of hazard, i.e.: traffic loads, earthquakes, flood-induced scour, landslides, long-term creep etc. Finally, the session will also cover research activity, case study, experimental results and numerical analysis outcomes concerning the repair and the strengthening of MABs with traditional or innovative techniques including investigations on the issues of sustainability, environmental impact and life-cycle assessment. The main topics that this special session is intended to collect are, but not limited to:

  • Life-cycle analysis;
  • Structural assessment of Masonry Arch Bridges;
  • Nonlinear behaviour of Masonry Arch Bridges;
  • Case studies of Masonry Arch Bridges: assessment and repair;
  • Innovative techniques and advanced materials for the strengthening of Masonry Arch Bridges;
  • Structural Health Monitoring of Masonry Arch Bridges;
  • Risk and vulnerability analysis under single and multiple hazards.

MS 20 – Structural Resilience in Bridge Engineering: Method, Theory, and Practice

Airong Chen

Tongji University
Shanghai, China

Xuhui He

Central South University
Changsha, China

Xin Ruan

Tongji University
Shanghai, China

In social development and economic activities, bridge structures play an important role. With the development of design strategies and construction techniques, higher and more detailed requirements are proposed for structural service performance, especially structural resilience. The resilience of infrastructures includes early warning before disasters, safe response during disasters, and quick recovery after disasters. Compared with safety requirements, structural resilience is a comprehensive concept based on a series of structural properties and novel technologies, and its assessment, guarantee, and improvement are also tightly related to advanced intelligent methods.The purpose of this mini-symposium is to attract state-of-the-art research focusing on the resilience of bridge structures, including methods, theory, and practice. The following topics will be discussed:

  • Advanced theoretical framework for the resilience of bridge systems
  • Resilience assessment and improvement strategies of bridge structures
  • Intelligent methods and techniques used in structural resilience assessment
  • Resilience models in bridge design, construction, and maintenance
  • Case report on bridge resilience analysis and engineering applications