WORKSHOP ON Uncertain Climate Futures – A New Reality for Structural Design and Integrity Management
Joint Workshop of the JCSS and FRI
Date and Place:
The workshop will be held at Industriens Hus Copenhagen, Denmark, on June 16-17, 2025
Objectives of the workshop
To ensure resilience, safety and reliability of infrastructure systems in the face of the uncertain climate futures – a new common rationale for decision support is urgently needed (see also the section on background). This rationale should be generic yet adaptable to specific local climate conditions and their temporal variations.
It is in this light that the Danish Association of Consulting Engineers (FRI) and the Joint Committee on Structural Safety (JCSS) have taken the initiative to conduct this workshop with the objectives to:
− Provide awareness – bring the challenge of climate change in the context of planning, design and integrity management of infrastructure systems and structures to the attention of relevant public authorities, owners and operators, as well as consultants and contractors.
− Align perspectives – exchange knowledge on the challenges of climate change in its various dimensions for infrastructure systems, and discuss potential approaches on how to cope with the associated very large knowledge uncertainties.
− Join forces – achieve consensus on how to move forwards in establishing a rationale for dealing with climate changes in the context of structures and infrastructures, and to set directions on how to implement this – within an adequately short time horizon.
Concept and structure of the workshop
The workshop will take place over 2 full days, and will bring together professionals from different parts of the world, including; i) climate scientists, ii) owners, operators, contractors, consultants and regulators, and iii) experts in structural reliability, risk informed decision making and pre-normative and normative work.
On the first day the scene will be set by presentations from climate scientists who will provide an overview of what they know and don’t know about the future global and local effects of climate change. After this, short appraisals of the challenges of climate changes will be provided from the perspectives of owners of structure and infrastructure systems, operators, regulators, contractors and consulting engineers. This will surely define the themes for discussions at the workshop dinner.
On the second day, experts from the domain of structural reliability, risk informed decision making, pre-normative and normative work, will give their ideas and perspectives on the principal effects of climate changes that should be addressed – and also on how the substantial knowledge related uncertainties, that are associated with the future climate may be accounted for.
Finally, at the end of the workshop we will jointly establish a consensus on how to proceed in developing decision bases for development and integrity management of structures and infrastructure systems.
International Scientific Committee:
An international scientific committee with the objective to ensure a broad geographical engagement of stakeholders and an adequate representation of the presently available knowledge on the main topic of the conference has been formed. At the present time the international scientific committee is comprised of:
− Adamantia Athanasopoulou (European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy)
− Alan O’Connor (Member of the JCSS, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
− Andre Beck (Member of the JCSS, University of Sao Paolo, Brazil)
− Arzhang Alimoradi (NIRAS, Denmark)
− Bruce Ellingwood (Member of the JCSS, Colorado State University, USA)
− Carmen Andrade (Member of the JCSS, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain)
− Celeste Viljoen (Member of the JCSS, University of Stellenbosch, ZA)
− Colin Caprani (Member of the JCSS, Monash University, Australia)
− Dagang Lu (Member of the JCSS, Harbin Institute of Technology, China)
− Daniel Straub (Member of the JCSS, Technical University of Munich, Germany)
− Dimitri Val (Member of the JCSS, Heriot-Watt University, UK)
− Eleni Chatzi (ETH-Zürich, Switzerland)
− Eloi Figueiredo (Lusófona University Lisbon, Portugal)
− Emilio Bastidas (La Rochelle University, France)
− Gian Paolo Cimellaro (Politecnico di Torino, Italy)
− Jianbing Chen (Member of the JCSS, Tongji University, China)
− Jianjun Qin (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China)
− Jie Li (Member of the JCSS, Tongji University, China)
− Jim Hall (University of Oxford, UK)
− Jochen Köhler (President of the JCSS, Norwegian University of Technology and Science, Norway)
− José Guadalupe Rangel Ramírez (Member of the JCSS, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico)
− Junho Song (Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea)
− Marc, Maes (Member of the JCSS, University of Calgary, Canada)
− Marco Broccardo (Member of the JCSS, University of Trento, Italy)
− Maria Pina Limongelli (Member of the JCSS, Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
− Mark Stewart (Member of the JCSS, University of Technology Sydney, Australia)
− Miroslav Sykora (Member of the JCSS, University of Prague, Czech Republic)
− Niels Peter Høj (Member of the JCSS, Høj Consult, Switzerland)
− Paolo Gardoni (Member of the JCSS, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA)
− Pedro Castro Borges (Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN Unidad, Merida, Mexico)
− Peter Tanner (Member of the JCSS, The Eduardo Torroja Institute for Construction Sciences, Spain)
− Raphael Steenbergen (Member of the JCSS, TNO Delft, the Netherlands)
− Robby Caspele (Member of the JCSS, Ghent University, Belgium)
− Sebastian Thöns (Member of the JCSS, Lund University, Sweden)
− Signe Schløer (NIRAS, Denmark)
− Sven Thelandersson (Lund University, Sweden)
− Tina Vejrum (COWI, Denmark)
− Ton Vrouwenvelder (Past President of the JCSS, TNO Delft, the Netherlands)
− Yaohan Li (Hong Kong Metropolitan University, China)
− You Dong (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China)
Venue and logistics
The workshop will take place at Industriens Hus, the premises of the Danish Association of Consulting Engineers (FRI).
Industriens Hus is located in the very center of Copenhagen, just next to the Tivoli and the main rail and metro stations with direct connection to Copenhagen Airport only 20 minutes away. There is a very wide selection of hotels within walking range of Industriens Hus.
Registration
The workshop will take place on June 16-17, 2025. A preliminary program for the workshop is enclosed in the present flyer. The final version of the program will be distributed about 1 month ahead of the workshop.
The workshop will be organized as a non-profit event and the registration costs and attendance of the workshop dinner will be limited to around 400 Euro per person in total.
The registration and payment of the participation fee, including lunch on both days and the workshop dinner must be made on the following link (bank transfers and credit card payments are possible). (to be filled out in a few days).
Due to a significant interest in the workshop and limited space at the venue, there may be limitations to attendance. Therefore if you are interested in attending, you are encouraged to register early.
Workshop Flyer
The workshop flyer can be found below. Please feel free to distribute the information among your colleagues.