The International Association for Wind Engineering (IAWE): Progress and prospects

Abstract: The International Association for Wind Engineering (IAWE) was born in 1975, at the 4th International Conference on Wind Engineering (ICWE), London, UK, in a pioneering stage of wind engineering. It operated, mostly informally, until 1999, when the IAWE Steering Committee Meeting at the 10th ICWE, Copenhagen, Denmark, decided to open a wide debate and study new tools to make the IAWE coherent with the impressive development in wind engineering. Following this decision, new IAWE by-laws were compiled and a renewed organisation was proposed to and accepted by the Steering Committee Meeting at the 11th ICWE, Lubbock, TX, 2003. This decision promoted several actions aimed at offering the international wind engineering community a more operative and efficient service and support. In particular, an Executive Board was constituted to drive the Association and its activities between two subsequent ICWEs; a Secretariat was established to administer the IAWE and to represent a reference point for the wind engineering community; several associations and societies were accepted into IAWE membership, and a wide network of links and cooperations was created among member organisations, supporting members and other individual contacts spread to all parts of the world; the official IAWE web site—www.iawe.org—was created; renewed liaisons were made operative with international organisations working in wind engineering and similar fields; IAWE Awards were instituted in the broad field of wind engineering; a better sequence of dates and venues of the most important wind engineering conferences was planned. This paper provides a general framework and some critical remarks on the progress and the prospects of the IAWE. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]