1. The inherent risks of implementing applications and design solutions based on these novel soft computing technologies and methodologies to civil, structural and environmental engineering. What sort of strategies and policies should be adopted to manage these risks and mitigate against any adverse consequences?
2. The role of regulatory agencies in developing appropriate safeguards, monitoring and dealing with adverse consequences of applying to all branches of civil, structural and environmental engineering the collection of methodologies that aim to exploit the tolerance for imprecision and uncertainty to achieve tractability, robustness, and low- solution cost. How relevant is an integrated view of soft computing to solve real life problems? Will such a view aid creativity? Crucially, will this view stifle or help to foster innovation?
3. Key issues concerning prescriptive vs. performance requirements for guidance/ codes/ norms in this case that derive from adopting soft computing technologies. Prescriptive requirements spell out exactly how something is to be done while performance requirements merely outline what the required level of performance is and leave it up to the designers how this is achieved. Historically prescriptive requirements are very reactive and depend largely on a problem occurring followed by changes to the industry guidance/ standards to ensure that the problem never happens again.
4. The impact on certification and assurance systems of applying the soft computing technologies in civil, structural and environmental engineering. What will be the effects on quality improvement essentials for engineering schemes?
5. The impact of the soft computing technologies on building guidance/norms in civil, structural and environmental engineering and on the processes of producing them and keeping these norms up to date while being responsive to changing technological developments. What aspects should be mandatory and what should be non-mandatory? Will all this affect the project delivery in terms of programme finance and progress?
6. The costs of conducting the essential development work, testing and validating associated with the production of relevant industry standards and guidance/ norms. How are these costs to be shared between private and public sector organisations? Is the approach or practice of using Standards Organisations to pool together financial and intellectual resources in order to produce guidance/ norms that remain current and technically sound appropriate?

Please note that papers that are found to fall outside the scope of this session may be considered for other sessions.

To submit abstracts for this special session, please email the organiser directly at (m.phiri AT sheffield.ac.uk) or alternatively submit your abstract directly to the Conference Editor using the abstract submission portal. If you use the portal, please do not forget to mention that your abstract is part of special session CSC11-S08.