Introduction
This book contains peer reviewed and accepted papers that were submitted for the “The Sixth International Structural Engineering and Construction Conference (ISEC-6)” held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland on June 21–26, 2011.
The articles reflect all branches of structural, architectural and construction engineering as well as construction and project management. Particular attention was given to challenging geotechnical, structural, and infrastructure problems as well as to construction and project management in regard to construction methods and industrialization, cost, risk and safety management, and the interdisciplinary integrative approach in life cycle design, construction, and management.
The ISEC-6 conference at ETH was designed to promote innovative solutions to the challenges of sustainable construction in many articles presented here. In view of the rapid world population growth, the limits to the economical mining of natural resources and growing carbon dioxide emission are among the most pressing problems facing the world today. The construction industry thus has a pivotal role in solving many of these key problems in developing and developed countries. Due to the fact that all over the world the population is migrating more and more to cities, we have to solve the slum problems and provide the needed infrastructure for a healthy society.
The construction industry in developed countrieswill have to face the future’s challenging tasks of building new green buildings and rehabilitating existing buildings by transforming them into self-sufficient energy systems. The challenging problem for the construction industry in developing countries consists of providing adequate sustainable shelter in a robust quality for the growing populations. This importance as a key industry in any society will be underlined by the fact that the construction industry has to design, build, maintain andmanage the infrastructure in rural areas as well in agglomerations, cities and mega cities.
In a special Swiss session, the efforts and contributions of the Swiss government, Swiss engineers, and the Swiss construction industry for a sustainable society were presented in two workshops on the following topics:
– Swiss Championship in Tunneling
– The Swiss Approach to Sustainability
I would like to thank all the authors of the published articles for their excellent work and enthusiastic participation in this conference. My sincerest gratitude is expressed to the reviewers for their tremendous effort in maintaining the high standards of the ISEC conference. Thanks are also extended to the members of the international and Local Technical, Advisory and Organizing Committees and to all sponsors. Last but not least, I would like to thank my staff at the Institute of Construction and Infrastructure Management for the tremendous effort that went into making ISEC-6 a successful conference.
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Girmscheid |