On April 16-19, the workshop “Preventing Building Collapses” was organized as a part of the European Research Council (ERC) Endure project. The workshop consisted of several key activities, including keynote lectures, working (brainstorming) sessions, and site visits with members of Endure’s Advisory Board.
We welcomed distinguished experts in progressive collapse and structural engineering from all over the world: Mark Stewart (University of Technology Sydney), Sarah Orton (University of Missouri), Miguel Fernández Ruiz (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), and Renata Obiala (ArcelorMittal). They shared their experience and expertise on relevant topics for preventing the collapse of buildings. The detailed activities that we organised on each day are described as follows:
April 16. We visited the outdoor testing facility in Alberic (Valencia) to see the full-scale precast building specimen that was tested to collapse as a part of the Work Package (WP) 3 of Endure.
April 17. The invited experts delivered keynote lectures related to preventing the collapse of buildings. The session was streamed (live) on our YouTube channel and is now accessible through the video below.
April 18. A working (brainstorming) session of the Endure project took place, in which important topics of the project were discussed, such as the fuse designs and subassembly testing of WP2, the full-scale building tests of WP3, the demonstration of the reliability and benefits of proposed solutions (WP1) and other aspects like the general research plan, strategic aspects, and future Proof of Concept ideas.
April 19. Several internal meetings were organized with the invited experts to discuss potential lines of research collaborations with our group followed by several visits to relevant structures in Valencia.
We want to express our sincere gratitude to all the invited experts for participating in the workshop and contributing significantly to the Endure project through their feedback and input. We shared four working days that were greatly beneficial for the advancement of the project.
