The organizing committee has reached the consensus that the 5th Asia-Pacific conference on unsaturated soils is postponed due to the following reasons:

- Kasetsart University is now flooded and temporarily closed until further notice. Most organizing committee, staffs, and their families have become flood victims.

- The flood situation in parts of Bangkok remains serious and its future in other parts including Suvarnnabhumi airport is still uncertain. There is a possibility of complications and safety issues in transportation between Suvarnabhumi airport and Pattaya. Many displaced people take refuge in Pattaya and there is report of shortage of necessity supplies (e.g. bottled drinking water) in the area.

- Some countries, e.g. Canada, Japan, UK, Hong Kong, have issued a "Travel Advisory" for Thailand at varying degrees of seriousness. It is unclear when this travel warning will be lifted.

We feel truly sorry for the difficulties for the participants to rearrange their programmes, travel arrangement, and hotel booking. However, to ensure the utmost safety of participants and smooth operation of conference, the committee decided to postpone the conference to a later date.

The organizing committee is working towards the most appropriate future conference date and currently plan to be around March 2012. We will announce the certain date within 2 weeks.

Updated 2 November 2011