ENCOURAGEMENT OF FORENSIC “STRUCTURAL” ENGINEERING

Abstract

 As a “prospect paper” supposed to review the state of arts of current technology for systemization and the future technology development regarding hybrid structures, the suitable issue was deliberated carefully and eventually the tentative title of the prospect paper was decided such as Forensic Structural Engineering or Clinical Structural Engineering in the keyword so as to summarize what I had been thinking about for the past several decades. For the enormous stock of important civil infrastructures that have been maintained continuously in order to improve the quality of life, related to design, fabrication, erection and maintenance of civil infrastructures, “technology quality assurance/sustainability”, “accident (disaster) investigation”, “acceptability and risk of new technology” must be dealt with across various fields by not only researchers and practitioners but also administrative experts or legal practitioners; that is, “Forensic Engineering” is becoming very important. I hope that the content of this manuscript will help structural engineers to widen a new and cross sectoral research field based on their specialization.