Floods and Heritage Structures

We are pleased to present this special issue on “Flood Impact to Heritage Structures.” Included are seven comprehensive and informative papers on flood risk assessment, damage categorization, geotechnical problems, water saturation effects on historic building materials, and performance of a specific stone bridge subjected to severe flooding.

An introduction by guest editor Miloš F. Drdácký defines the magnitude of the flood hazard, particularly with regard to historic and culturally significant buildings and bridges. Miloš Drdácký, whose biographical information is given with his editorial, is uniquely qualified to address this subject. His expertise in forensic evaluations and in developing mitigation strategies to protect heritage structures and heritage cities from natural hazards is impressive, with tangible contributions to the field extending over many decades. Miloš Drdácký is a founding member of the Editorial Review Board for this journal, and I value his friendship dearly. I have worked with him for more than $20\text{years}$ , going back to a series of annual conferences he organized, beginning in 1990 and held in Prague, Czech Republic. The title of the conference series was Learning from Structural Failures. These conferences were among the first truly international events focused on lessons from forensic engineering investigations.

I know you will find this special issue to be valuable and especially useful to practitioners. Special issues, in general, represent a considerable amount of extra work, both on the part of our Editorial Review Board and the ASCE Publications staff, but they continue to be very popular with our readers. I want to recognize the contributions of Kelly Anderson, publishing manager of journals, and our ASCE editorial coordinator, Emily Sirotta, in making these publications possible.

If you are a regular subscriber, you will note that this issue contains fewer pages than a typical issue. However, the preceding and following issues will be larger than usual, to fulfill our page budget. It was determined that this would be the best strategy to maintain the integrity of this special issue as a stand-alone document.