Rector Eva Schulev-Steindl is honoured to welcome Univ.Prof. Dipl.Ing. Dr. Alfred Strauss as new Professor for Systems Engineering on behalf of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU). BOKU cordially invites you to the inaugural lecture on Monday, February 27, 2023, at 4:30 pm.

For Alfred Strauss, the focus of his research is on the efficient design and maintenance of infrastructures such as bridges, tunnels and protective structures against natural hazards. There is a profound shift in engineering toward a life-cycle-oriented design and maintenance philosophy, he explains, to meet ever-increasing economic, environmental, social, and political demands and to address new environmental challenges such as the effects of global warming and climate change.

Strauss has focused on the durability, longevity, robustness and reliability of existing and new infrastructures and their materials to improve the fundamental understanding of the structural performance and sustainability of the infrastructures available to us.

Many people are not immediately aware of the sustainable operation and maintenance of infrastructure and its importance to our daily lives. "Bridges and tunnels are familiar to many, but we have only become aware that infrastructures such as protective structures against natural hazards significantly protect our social activities, economic and living spaces since the visible effects of climate change," says the professor of systems engineering, explaining the societal importance.

Modern analysis methods, monitoring and digitization technologies, for example, make it possible to strengthen this system thinking, to recognize the effects of climate change and to take innovative measures to maintain or increase resilience at an early stage. But this system thinking requires much more than monitoring and digitization technologies. It requires the proper application of predictive models for environmental processes and for infrastructure degradation processes in combination with probabilistic optimization concepts and methods. These allow us to reasonably deal with the existing uncertainties, reliabilities and risks of infrastructures.

His professional path to infrastructure/structural mechanics research at BOKU led Alfred Strauss to work in bridge construction in Austria and Germany for three years after graduating from HTBLA Wiener Neustadt with a degree in civil engineering and a diploma in civil engineering from the Vienna University of Technology. "However, it was always clear to me that I wanted to continue my scientific development and earn a doctorate," he says. He completed his doctorate in 2004 at the Institute of Structural Engineering at BOKU, where he subsequently worked as a research assistant and lecturer. In 2008, Strauss, who also conducted research at the University of Boulder, Colorado, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, and Ghent University, among others, during this period, habilitated in structural mechanics with his postdoctoral thesis "Probability Concepts in Engineering - Stochastic in Materials and Structures."

Welcome and introductory words

Rector Univ.Prof. in MMag.a Dr.in Eva Schulev-Steindl, LL.M

Univ.Prof. Dipl.Ing. Dr. Johannes Hübl
Head of the Department of Civil Engineering and Natural Hazards

Inaugural lecture of Univ.Prof. Dipl.Ing. Dr. Alfred Strauss

Institute for Structural Engineering

"Sustainable infrastructure in climate change"

Monday, February 27, 2023 at 4:30 p.m.

University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Vienna
Ilse-Wallentin-Haus, seminar room 29
Peter-Jordan-Strasse 82
1190 Vienna

Moderation of the event     

O.Univ.Prof. Dipl.Ing. DDr. Konrad Bergmeister, MSc. PhD
Head of the Institute for Structural Engineering

We look forward to seeing you in the live stream at
https://youtu.be/3mi8KSc0lQE