Piero P. Bonissone - Böcker

Structural safety of industrial systems and components raises a steadily growing public, scientific and engineering interest, and causes permanent development of methods and techniques used for its assessment. In addition to the well established engineering methods, applied in the field, several new methods and tools have emerged recently. Among them, the most novel ones are probably those related to expert system applica­ tions, appearing as an important possible improvement of the current engineering practice. The issue has been addressed by the international course EXPERT SYSTEMS IN STRUCTURAL SAFETY ASSESSMENT organized by MPA Stuttgart and JRC Ispra (Stuttgart, October 2-4, 1989), and the proceedings of the course are contained in this volume of the Lecture Notes ill Engineering. The contributions (invited lectures) tackle the issues usually confronting developers and users of expert systems applied in structural engineering, i.e. in structural safety and integrity assessment. Both the book and the course are a combination of a tutorial and of presentation of the current achievements in the field. Starting from the basic elements of expert systems (knowledge based systems), the book should "guide" the reader up to the applications in various particular sub-domains.

The unexpected and premature passing away of Professor Ebrahim H. "Abe" Mamdani on January, 22, 2010, was a big shock to the scientific community, to all his friends and colleagues around the world, and to his close relatives. Professor Mamdani was a remarkable figure in the academic world, as he contributed to so many areas of science and technology. Of great relevance are his latest thoughts and ideas on the study of language and its handling by computers. The fuzzy logic community is particularly indebted to Abe Mamdani (1941-2010) who, in 1975, in his famous paper An Experiment in Linguistic Synthesis with a Fuzzy Logic Controller, jointly written with his student Sedrak Assilian, introduced the novel idea of fuzzy control. This was an elegant engineering approach to the modeling and control of complex processes for which mathematical models were unknown or too difficult to build, yet they could effectively and efficiently be controlled by human operators. This ground-breaking idea has found innumerable applications and can be considered as one of the main factors for the proliferation and adoption of fuzzy logic technology.Professor Mamdani's own life and vital experience are illustrative of his “never surrendering” attitude while facing adversaries, which is normal for a person proposing any novel solution, and represent a great example for everybody. His subtle sense of humor, his joy for life, and his will to critically help people, especially young people, were characteristics deeply appreciated by all the people who enjoyed and benefited from his friendship and advice.This book constitutes a posthumous homage to Abe Mamdani. It is a collection of original papers related in some way to his works, ideas and vision, and especially written by researchers directly acquainted with him or with his work. The underlying goal of this book will be fulfilled if, in the very spirit of Mamdani's legacy, the papers will trigger ascientific or philosophical debate on the issues covered, or contribute to a cross-fertilization of ideas in the various fields.