IABSE National Groups
According to the By-laws, a National Group (NG) of IABSE consists of all Association members within one country. IABSE is present in 93 countries and is represented by 60+ National Groups—which is growing. Please keep sending your NG news and updates to Brindarica Bose at [email protected]. Below is a comprehensive report of National Groups (NG) onsite and online, which took place within the last few months. For future events organised by the NGs, please refer to: https://iabse.org/Events/Calendar-of-Events
New Zealand
New Zealand new Chair, Oliver de Latour; Vice Chair, Moustafa Al-ani
We would like to welcome our New Chair Oliver de Lautour and Vice Chair Moustafa Al-ani who took over the responsibility of the National Group from July 2023. We wish them good luck for future National Group activities and extend our best wishes and heartfelt thanks to Alessandro Palermo, former Chair, who is now in the US.
Bolivia
The Bolivian Group of IABSE planned visit the Prestressed works at La Paz City in September and the Miguillas Hydroelectric Plant in October. In addition, they are also planning courses on basic statistics in current engineering practice, from paper to spreadsheets for young engineers. The Bolivian National Group has been working on developing the activities, and a conference is being planned on prestressed concrete structures. A group of engineers has been formed to prepare the conference on seismic isolators, with the support of Latin American specialists. The Chairs of the National Groups in Latin America have organised virtual meetings for the revision of dates for the continuity of scheduled activities to disseminate IABSE activities in the universities, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and Universidad Católica, both in La Paz city. We extend our congratulations to Roberto Sandoval, who has been nominated as the IABSE Young Engineer representative for these programs.
Austria
IABSE Austrian Group Chair, Alfred Strauss chaired the EuroStruct Conference from 25-29 September 2023 in Vienna, and aimed to promote international cooperation in the field of sustainable life-cycle civil engineering for the purpose of enhancing the welfare of society.
Belgium and The Netherlands
The Belgian and Dutch National Groups of IABSE are jointly organising a Young Engineers Colloquium 2023 (YEC2023) on 24 and 25 November 2023 at the Aula of Ghent University in Ghent, Belgium. YEC2023 is especially meant for young engineers to exchange knowledge internationally, with a focus on Belgium, the Netherlands and neighbouring countries. The colloquium is open to all professionals interested in structural engineering regardless of their age, but apart from the Keynote Speaker, all presenters are young engineers under 35 years of age.
Mexico
Carlos Mendez, IABSE Vice President, representing the Association in Latam conferences
Carlos Mendez, Vice President of IABSE represented IABSE and the Mexican NG, as a Keynote Speaker during the 1st International Symposium on Civil Engineering and Sustainability, held during 28-29 August 2023, at the Campus Querétaro of TEC, organized by the Tecnológico de Monterrey (TEC), Region South-Center, with the support of the Mexican Institute of Transportation, the College of Civil Engineers of Queretaro and the College of Civil Engineers of Puebla.
United Kingdom
IABSE's British Group organised the 2023 Future of Design (FoD) Competition on Conference on 21 September which reflected on the topic of ‘Artificial Intelligence in the context of structural engineering, imagining how past projects would be designed in a different manner 30 years from now, after 2050'. For further details, please read the FoD summary written by David Knight in this issue of SEI.
Turkey and Spain
Starting from a desire to support National Groups during calamities, recently IABSE’s Spanish National Group collaborated with the Turkish National Group, after the 6 February 2023 earthquake took place, which devastated parts of Turkey and Syria. Both NG Chairs, Alp Caner and M. Dolores G. Pulido, professors at the METU (Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey) and UPM (Technical University of Madrid, Spain), respectively, have enabled an academic collaboration between both universities. Work has already started this summer, with a two-month visit (July-August 2023) from a UPM Master student to METU, whose Master's thesis is being coordinated by both Universities' Professors. A face-to-face meeting between Alp and M. Dolores took place in Ankara in September, which has widened the spectrum of opportunities for collaboration between both Universities, expanding the horizon of professional collaboration that takes place amongst IABSE members.
North Macedonia
From 28–29 September 2023, the newly formed National Group, chaired by Prof. Darko Nakov, organised along with the Macedonian Association of Structural Engineers (MASE) the 20th MASE International Symposium on Resilient Structures in Skopje, North Macedonia. Dr. Tina Vejrum, President of IABSE, delivered a Keynote Lecture. The technical presentations were very well received. A valuable event outcome was the inclusion of two Macedonian earthquake engineering community members in IABSE's (new) Task Group for Earthquake Emergency Response.
