Newsletter October 2002
SAMCO : Structural Assessment, Monitoring & Control
SAMCO - European Network dedicated to Structural Assessment, Monitoring & Control
SAMCO is a thematic Network, dealing with structural assessment and monitoring of bridges, rail & road systems, that is funded by the European Commission as part of its fifth framework programme and started in 2001. It is co-ordinated by VCE Holdings GMBH (Vienna Consulting Engineers) and incorporates a separate fifth framework submission called BridgeNet, which was to have been co-ordinated by Autostrade (the Italian Motorway operator), which was to deal more specifically with bridge issues. There are 20 (lead) partners and over 20 members, with new members being signed up from time to time.
The UK partners are BRE and TRL Ltd and FaberMaunsell is the only UK member at the time of writing this article. In addition Railtrack and London Underground are included in the bridge end user group. It has an active web site (www.samco.org)., with regular newsletters. The second SAMCO workshop is to be held in late September in Brussels to present state of the art reports in the field, and to plan future projects, particularly in the light of the recently announced sixth framework programme. The workshop will be divided into two main areas, health monitoring and seismic evaluation. In addition a major conference (called a Summer Academy) is planned to be held in Cambridge during 2003.
We have recently agreed to collaborate with Samco, by sharing web site links and to interact via links at future meetings. Brian Bell (one of our Committee members) has been appointed as the link person between Simonet and Samco. And we look forward to his feedback following the September workshop.
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