How the earth shook for Milan’s WCEE seismic conference bid 2024

Milan has won the right to host the 2024 edition of the World Conference in Earthquake Engineering (WCEE). The international seismic engineering event is held every four years and is expected to draw 5,000 delegates to the city. Congress organiser AIM Group International worked on the bid in collaboration with the academic world, engineering companies and the city authorities. Organisers worked with two academic associations: Anidis (Italian National Association of Seismic Engineering) and ISI (Italian Seismic Engineering) and the European Center for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering)l The MiCo Convention Center will host the event. Fifty-nine national delegates of the countries that constitute the IAEE (International Association for Earthquake Engineering) voted online and chose Milan over competitive bids from Montreal (Canada), Lyon (France), New Delhi (India) and Auckland (New Zealand). The WCEE Congress will return to Italy, 30 June-5 July 2024, 51 years after it took place in Rome in 1973. “We worked with great commitment on this project, designing an innovative and creative bid dossier. Our Group has invested in a long process that led us to this important acquisition,” said Flaminia Roberti, global sales director of AIM Group International. The 2020 edition of WCEE had been due to take place in Japan, but because of the pandemic that congress was postponed to 2021 and the 2024 bid presentation was, therefore, moved online instead of being presented to delegates in person in Japan. Marica Motta, sales operation coordinator of AIM Group, presented a motivational video with support messages from international opinion leaders and important institutional endorsements (Lombardy Region, Civil Protection, Mayor of Milan, National Council of Engineers). There was also film offering a behind-the-scenes look at construction work for the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and of the exceptional Shake Lab of the EuCenter Foundation. “This win galvanises us: we look to the future with optimism, waiting to put our passion back into the organisation of big events with our cities as the ideal stage,” Roberti concluded.