Peshawar - The first one-day International virtual conference on ‘Recent Advances in Civil and Earthquake Engineering (ICCEE-2021) ‘Making Resilient Infrastructures’ was held here on Friday.
The Department of Civil Engineering, UET Peshawar organised the conference under the supervision of   Civil Engineering Department Chairman Prof Dr Irshad.  UET Peshawar Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Iftikhar Hussain was the chief guest at the inaugural session.
Prof Dr Iftikhar in his address said that UET Peshawar is privileged to actively contributing in developing the national building code of Pakistan in 2007 and establishing the standards in coordination with government authorities.
Prof Dr Irshad briefed the participants on the objectives of conference with special focus on 8th October 2005 earthquake that caused a colossal damage to the infrastructure and human lives in Pakistan.  
He said that the UET Department of Civil Engineering has been very active in multiple directions to serve the country from developing seismic based building codes for Pakistan.
The conference brought together leading academic scientists and researchers to share views on latest trends and practical challenges in the field of civil engineering.
Prof Dr Tim Sullivan from University of Canterbury, New Zealand and Dr Ketrin Beyer from Peking University, Beijing, China, spoke in the opening session and emphasized on application of modern design methods to control risk and urged the civil engineers to communicate the solutions with regard to earthquakes risks in future for disaster-resilient societies. Several other speakers from Italy, Canada, Switzerland, Iran, Hong Kong, and Japan also spoke in six parallel sessions during the conference.