8th International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference (ISOPE 1998)

The ISOPE, the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers, was granted on September 15, 1989 the status of tax-exempt, non-profit scientific and educational organization under Code 501(c)(3) from the United States Internal Revenue Code. The ISOPE opened its offices initially in the USA, Japan, Korea, China, the UK and Norway. The Society membership is open equally to all with active interest in promoting engineering and scientific progress in the fields of interdisciplinary offshore, ocean and polar engineering. The membership comes initially from more than 30 countries, and encompasses a variety of activities including technical conferences, publications, scholarship and professional recognition programs, continuing education, and international cooperation.

The Society’s annual conference, the Annual International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference (ISOPE Conference), has held one of the world’s largest of its kind with refereed papers. The conference has been held alternatively among the continents, and has had participants from more than 50 countries.

The purposes of the ISOPE conference are to: * Promote technological progress and activities, international technological transfer and cooperation, and opportunities for engineers to maintain and improve technical competence; and * Provide a timely international forum for technical activities, cooperation, opportunity and fellowship among researchers and engineers by developing focused session topics with high-quality papers (in both originality and significance) accepted through peer-review, establishing high international standards for publication and worldwide distribution, and promoting interdisciplinary interaction between academia and industry.