Letter from Jan Bien, Jan Biliszczuk, Pawel Hawryszkow, Scientific & Organising Committee Chairs:

As you perfectly know the IABSE Symposium Wrocław 2020 “Synergy of Culture and Civil Engineering – History and Challenges”, due to Covid-19 pandemic was rescheduled and postponed from May to October 7-9, 2020. It was a tough decision to make, as we were in full swing for the preparations to welcome all the delegates during beautiful spring in Poland.

Observing an improvement of the situation in many countries, the hope is rising in our hearts. Internal travels within the European Union have been just enabled, on the other hand there are restrictions imposed by governments and local authorities according to public events and social distancing. In Poland, currently meetings with less than 150 participants and with 2.0 m social distancing may be organised.

As we are 3 months before the Symposium and the situation is still uncertain, as well as taking into account the above described and difficult situation worldwide, we have decided to offer a new opportunity to attend our conference. We have developed a new registration category “Virtual Participation” with discounted prices. We firmly believe that this will enable many participants to join the event and safely meet.

We are sure that the Symposium will be a successful event. We have achieved very promising statistics: over 160 papers were accepted by the Scientific Committee, 3 Sponsors and 10 commercial Exhibitors are supporting the conference. Comparing with other international conferences organised by our experienced team, it promises to be one of the largest scientific and technical events we have organised. We have doubled our work to make all new arrangements and are doing our best to host the event in a creative and innovative way.

Please, find enclosed the article with brief information about the Symposium and our preliminary plans, published in SEI No. 1/2020. Please, visit the new, attractive website of IABSE and download the Final Invitation to read more about our excellent plans! Stay with us and meet in real or virtual world.

The Organising Committee has accepted the challenge of current times and guarantees that safety and sharing of knowledge is its top priority. The final decisions according to the format of the Symposium will be made in August and will be published on the IABSE website.

We invite you to join us for this outstanding IABSE event! If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us. More detailed information is available on the website: www.iabse.org/wroclaw2020.