Message from General Chairs
Welcome to Angers!
The 31st European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2021) is held in Angers, France on 19 - 23 September 2021. The annual European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL) is an international conference under the auspices of the European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA).
It is with great pleasure that all the technical and organizing committees and their chairs welcome you here in the city of Angers. We are happy to say that ESREL 2021 can be seen, in its hybrid face-to-face and remote organization, as a double event even if we have tried to synchronize as well as possible so that everyone has the feeling to participate in the same event. The 2 key words of the organization were foresight and resilience.
For those lucky enough to be with us physically, a few words about the city of Angers. Angers, the 17th city in France located in the middle of the western province Région Pays de la Loire, enjoys a good reputation as a desirable place to live. Angers, capital of the Plantagenet dynasty and one of the intellectual hotspots of Europe during the reign of King René d'Anjou in the medieval era, presents an architecture that is both modern and steeped in history. One of its most prestigious monuments is the imposing castle built between the 13th and 14th centuries which houses the biggest medieval tapestry ensemble in the world, the Apocalypse Tapestry. Angers is also part of both the Val de Loire, a world heritage site, and the Loire-Anjou-Touraine regional nature park and opens the doors to the Loire castles. Angers and its surroundings are also well-known for its gastronomy and wines.
ESREL 2021 organized by Université d'Angers is arranged at the Angers Convention Center. The University of Angers can be seen as a young university (we celebrate its 50th anniversary this year) with a very long history (it was created in 1364 by King Charles V and recognized by the Pope in 1436). It trains more than 23,000 students and delivers more than 402 degrees in more than 100 specialties. The Angers Convention Center, totally renovated and located in the heart of the city, is a nice little setting that offers us a very friendly environment for our 5 days of work.
The rich program for this year's conference includes 5 keynotes speakers with international excellence, 8 panels reflecting societal and methodological thoughts and challenges, and 15 sessions with 11 parallel tracks for a total of 593 papers, sharing new insights and ideas within different methods and application areas. Every presentation is filmed, broadcasted live and available for streaming on our platform. The traditional areas for the ESREL are continued, such as Accident and Incident Modeling, Risk Assessment, and Structural and System Reliability with an emphasis on Maintenance and Prognostic and Health Management topics. The program is also reflecting the multidisciplinary aspects of safety science, involving areas such as organizational and human factors, as well as resilience engineering. 24 special sessions with various opening topics proposed and organized by academic or industry researchers are presented in the program. This illustrates the enthusiasm of the community towards the ESREL event and we thank all the contributors at all levels.
We would like to underline the excellent level of support from the Pays de la Loire Region and the numerous local authorities of the Angers area. Thanks also to our sponsors and exhibitors.
Finally, the success of this event is already assured through the quality of your scientific proposal and your numerous participation in person and remotely. We hope for a richness of exchanges with great moments of conviviality. To all of you, authors and participants, we want to express our gratitude and thank you warmly.
| Bruno Castanier General Chair | Marko Cepin General Chair |
