Closing remarks

Dear IABMAS 2020 participants and IABMAS members:

With 505 participants from 38 countries, the IABMAS 2020 virtual conference was a great success. The conference started its organization in June 2018 with the initial target dates of June 28 – July 2, 2020. The IABMAS 2020 was held online from April 11 to 18, 2021. The conference was co-organized by the IABMAS and IABMAS Japan. The conference was chaired by Hiroshi Yokota (Hokkaido University, Japan) and Dan M. Frangopol (Lehigh University, USA), and the organizing committee was chaired by Hiroshi Yokota, Ichiro Iwaki (Nippon University, Japan) and Mitsuyoshi Akiyama (Waseda University, Japan). In April 2020, the organizing committee decided to postpone the conference to April 11-15, 2021 because of COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, the organizing committee had explored the possibility to hold a general in-person conference, but in December 2020, was forced to decide a virtual, on-demand style conference.

The theme of the conference was bridge maintenance, safety, management, life-cycle sustainability and innovations. From more than 800 submissions, 571 papers including the T.Y. Lin lecture, 9 keynote lectures and 561 papers were finally accepted and published in the proceedings. A wide range of topics was addressed at 19 Mini Symposia, 40 Special Sessions and General Sessions, including advanced bridge design, construction and maintenance approaches, safety, reliability and risk evaluation, life-cycle management, life-cycle sustainability, standardization, analytical models, bridge management systems, service life prediction, maintenance and management strategies, structural health monitoring, non-destructive testing and field testing, safety, resilience, robustness and redundancy, durability enhancement, repair and rehabilitation, fatigue and corrosion, extreme loads, and application of information and computer technology and artificial intelligence for bridges, among others.

The Proceedings have been published by CRC Press/Balkema, Taylor & Francis Group, London, 2021, with the set of Book (926 pages containing the 571 extended abstracts) and USB card (4238 pages containing the 571 full length papers); Book ISBN: 978-0-367-23278-8 (Hbk), ISBN: 978-0-429-27911-9 (eBook), DOI: 10.1201/9780429279119.

We would like to express our sincere appreciation to participants, lecturers, presenters, authors, members of International Scientific Committee, National Advisory Committee and Local Organizing Committee, and secretariat staff.

We look forward to seeing you at the next IABMAS conference, which will take place in Barcelona, Spain, July 11-15, 2022.

Hiroshi Yokota and Dan M. Frangopol
Chairs, IABMAS 2020
April 21, 2021