Public works civil infrastructure systems are made of many facilities and services including highways, bridges, airports, seaports, railroads, water resources systems, oil and gas pipelines, and others. It is to be noted that civil infrastructure systems are characterized by high fixed costs and long economic lives. They are critical to economic development, and function as complimentary industries. ISHMII is an international society with the objective to advance the understanding and the application of health monitoring methodologies for the condition assessment and management of the civil infrastructure systems. Our society is a focal point for international sharing of knowledge and experience in technologies impacting the discipline of Civil Structural Health Monitoring (CSHM) that include sensors, instrumentation, monitoring strategies, data mining, management, and interpretation for decision making processes, case studies, and so on. Since its inception in 2003, ISHMII has been able to promote international collaborations, encourage owners to build intelligent structures, demonstrated the benefits of CSHM methodologies for maintenance of structures and advanced the state-of-practice.

Our society made much progress, prospered by exponential growth in membership, instituted biennial conferences, held practice oriented workshops, and served as conduit for exchange of research results. At this juncture, ISHMII is in a unique position to address the challenges facing the infrastructure of the 21st century. It will be only through structural health monitoring where it will be possible to safely extend the service lives of the mature infrastructures of industrial nations or construct more daring larger span bridges in developing countries. Much more needs to be done, and for these reasons ISHMII will expand and embark on new initiatives, including: (1) publication of ISHMII's own journal to further extend the exchange of technical information within CSHM community; (2) Recommend application specific CSHM standards and guidelines; (3) organize local training programs for CSHM technologists and Civionics engineers.

As the President of this society, I am pleased to welcome you all as members. I look forward in working with you to accomplish our objectives and in furthering the important work of ISHMII.