Welcome to the new ACUUS website! ACUUS is a pioneer international, non-governmental organization, with 40 years of history since the first conference in Australia, promoting the use of the underground space in cities. Why cities? Because most of the human population lives in cities and metropolises. Urban areas are continuously growing, attracting more people and economic activities. As a result, today, urban areas face complex and ever-growing problems that deteriorate their environmental quality and threaten their sustainability and resilience. Since the beginning, ACUUS has always been an international leader in dealing with the contemporary challenges of our cities. Our organization's core ideas and philosophy support the systematic utilization of the urban underground space as the most efficient and environmentally friendly solution in order to enhance the quality of life and boost competitiveness of modern cities. We believe that modern cities and especially megacities in the 21^st century can be sustainable if, and only if, they are underground, to a certain extent.

We realized at a very early stage that urban underground development requires a multidisciplinary approach. We are proud because our character has enabled us to act as an international "think tank" in urban underground development. We consider our ability to constantly adapt to new conditions and our “out of the box” ideas as our strengths.

We strongly believe that strategic partnerships can help us achieve our goals. To this end, we have signed in the past years several MoUs with international organizations, such as the UN-Habitat and the AITES/ITA. We acknowledge the importance and opportunities arising from the participation of young engineers. A dedicated team is working to attract young engineers and we are closely cooperating with the Young Earth Scientists (YES) Network.

The 18^th ACUUS international conference took place during the first days of November 2023 in Singapore. It was a huge success with more than 600 registered participants, on site and virtual attendees. Academics, professionals, industry leaders, city authorities and various stakeholders from around the world exchanged ideas on the issues of underground space utilization.

We encourage you to browse through our refreshed website. It has a cross-platform design in order to provide the best experience in all devices. We envision it as a “one-stop-shop” for our current and future members. It contains the proceedings of our previous conferences, free to access, and a news section to find out what is happening in the ACUUS world. Furthermore, all of our newsletters are accessible and arranged in chronological order.

We always welcome fresh ideas, new ways of thinking and we are open to new collaborations. We are already looking ahead and if you want to be a part of ACUUS and actively participate in our activities, I encourage you to join our organization and become an ACUUS member.

Sincerely,

Dimitris Kaliampakos

ACUUS President