The Executive Board of IASSAR is chaired for a 4 year period by a chairman who is automatically the chairman of the Scientific Committee of the ICOSSAR. Upon election, former presidents of ICOSSAR become members of the executive committee.To ensure continuity, M. Shinozuka serves as a permanent vice president and secretary for IASSAR.

The membership in the IASSAR is limited to engineers and scientists with specialized expertise and interest in structural reliability, safety and risk analysis. Nominations for membership in the Association may be submitted by any member of the IASSAR, but must be approved by a majority of the members of the Executive Board. Membership in the IASSAR represents a recognition of accomplishments in structural reliability research and/or the practice of risk and reliability principles in structural engineering.

The objective of IASSAR-CSMSE is to develop and to promote the application of stochastic methods in structural mechanics. Analytical, i.e. scientific aspects of probabilistic modeling as well as aspects of application are emphasized. The committee should help to bridge and shorten the gap between research and application. It should also foster communication between researchers and practitioners as well as participate in continuing engineering education.

In particular the committee should concentrate on the following aspects:

Exchange of experience concerning newly developed stochastic methods and techniques (basic research). New applications in industry. How far have probabilistic methods progressed in daily work in industry? Where are the methods an indispensable part of analysis and design procedures. In which areas are the methods not yet used and why? What can the committee do to bring about progress in these areas? Identify those areas in which probabilistic methods have progressed down to codified design (synthesis of state of the art) practice and licensing.

The committee is concerned with various engineering areas such as aircraft and spacecraft engineering, offshore engineering and naval architecture, nuclear- and non nuclear power plant engineering, civil- and mechanical engineering, bio engineering, etc..

Under the "Umbrella" of the IASSAR-CSMSE, chaired by professor George Deodatis , Columbia University, New York, USA, the actual tasks of IASSAR-CSMSE are conducted by 5 subcommittees :

SC1: Computational Stochastic Mechanics
Chairman: Professor Roger Ghanem, University of Southern California, USA

SC2: Stochastic Dynamics
Chairman: Professor Arvid Naess, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Vice-Chairman: Professor Y.K. Wen, University of Illinois at Urbana, USA

SC3: Structural Reliability and Optimization
Chairman: Professor Armen Der Kiureghian, University of California, Berkeley,USA
Vice-Chairman: Professor Dan Frangopol, Lehigh University,USA

SC4: Stochastic Material Models including Fatigue, Fracture and Damage
Chairman: Professor Chung-Bang Yun, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea
Vice-Chairman: Dr. Sarah C. Baxter, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, USA

SC5: Systems Identification and Structural Control
Chairman: Professor James L. Beck, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA

The members of the five subcommittees together make up the members of IASSAR-CSMSE with admittance to all "Umbrella" committee meetings.
 

The inaugural meeting of IASSAR-CSMSE (umbrella) was held in Innsbruck, Austria, on June 23, 1987.