Publications Details
Assuring the Performance of Buildings and Infrastructures: Report of Discussions
How to ensure the appropriate performance of our built environment in the face of normal conditions, natural hazards, and malevolent threats is an issue of emerging national and international importance. As the world population increases, new construction must be increasingly cost effective and at the same time increasingly secure, safe, and durable. As the existing infrastructure ages, materials and techniques for retrofitting must be developed in parallel with improvements in design, engineering, and building codes for new construction. Both new and renovated structures are more often being subjected to the scrutiny of risk analysis. An international conference, "Assuring the Performance of Buildings and Infrastructures," was held in May 1997 to address some of these issues. The conference was co-sponsored by the Architectural Engineering Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the American Institute of Architects, and Sandia National Laboratories and convened in Albuquerque, NM. Many of the papers presented at the conference are found within this issue of Techno20~. This paper presents some of the major conference themes and summarizes discussions not found in the other papers.