Eurasian OpenSEES Days on 20 and 21 June 2019

The Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE) of The Hong Kong PolytechnicUniversity (PolyU) was pleased to report that the first Eurasian Conference on the Open Systemfor Earthquake Engineering Simulation (OpenSEES) was held at PolyU on 20 and 21 June2019.

As a platform for scholars and engineers from all over the world to share the latestcomputational tools for complex engineering analysis and design, the conference consisted ofover 40 presentations, including 3 keynote speeches from leading academics: Prof. FilipFilippou of the University of California at Berkeley, Prof. Xinzheng Lu of Tsinghua University,and Prof. Giorgio Monti of La Sapienza University of Rome. Prof. You-Lin Xu, Dean of theFaculty of Construction and Environment (FCE) of PolyU, gave a welcome address at theopening ceremony. The organizing committee was led by Prof. Asif Usmani, Head of BSE.

Attracting over 130 participants, the conference provided an overview of the latestdevelopments made on the OpenSEES framework as well as presented some research andpractical outcomes in which OpenSEES plays an important role.

The OpenSEES is a software framework for simulating the seismic response of structural andgeotechnical systems. OpenSEES has been developed as the computational platform forresearch in performance-based earthquake engineering at the Pacific Earthquake EngineeringResearch Center.

A one-day annual workshop providing foundational knowledge on using OpenSEES at a levelsuitable for beginner and intermediate users was arranged on 18 June 2019. Following theusers’ workshop, a developers’ workshop had been arranged to delve into introduction of newmodules into the OpenSEES framework, such as new material and element models, throughvarious hands-on exercises on 20 June 2019.

BSE would like to congratulate the success of the conference. We look forward to seeing theparticipants in BSE activities in the near future.