ASCE's Risk Management Community of Practice is proposing a Special Collection for the Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering. The collection will address risks – what can go wrong, likelihood it can go wrong, and consequences if it goes wrong – in these engineering specialties and how those risks are assessed, managed, monitored and communicated. Case studies and research papers are encouraged.
Threats to ocean, coastal, port, and waterway infrastructure arise from catastrophic events like hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, from incidents like allisions, overloads, and sabotage, and developing conditions like wave attack, relative sea level rise, and sedimentation. Inflation, equipment and material shortages and changing regulations may threaten design and construction schedules and cost estimates. A focused examination of risk assessment and management in the waterway, port, coastal, and ocean engineering arena is needed to examine how these related fields deal with such issues now and for the future.
The goal of this special collection is to document best practices and tools in risk assessment and management in the journal's areas of interest. Topics of interest include:
· Proper risk usage and meaningful insight into the probability of occurrence and consequences.
· New risks resulting from blind spots or a changing climate. For example, reduced flow rates due to drought and a warming climate.
· Practical examples of how AI can add value to conventional/existing practice.
· Risk Applications
o Life-Cycle Changes
o Relative Sea Level Change
o Channel Design
o Bridge Allision
o Submarine Landslides
o Offshore Structure Stability
o Corrosion
o Fendering & Mooring
o Vandalism & Terrorism
o Lock Gate Failure
· Risk Tools and Techniques
o Software and AI Applications
o Cognitive Biases &Threat Normalization
o "Black Swan" Events
o Treating Non-stationarity
Please send proposed paper titles with list of authors to ascecollection@... not later than 1 October 2026.
If your paper title is selected for the Special Collection, it will be included in our Community of Practice's proposal to the Journal. When the Journal accepts our proposal, authors will have 6 months to prepare and submit a draft paper for the Journal's normal review process.
------------------------------
William McAnally Ph.D., P.E., BC.CE, BC.NE, F.ASCE
ENGINEER
Columbus MS
------------------------------