This is the last issue of the EAEE Bulletin before the Eleventh European Conference on Earthquake Engineering and the EAEE General Assembly. In few weeks, I hope to meet with most of you in this last EAEE Conference for this millennium. It is hard to believe that four years has passed since we had our last conference in Vienna. During these four years, we tried to inform you about the activities of EAEE through these Bulletins. I hope you enjoyed the EAEE Bulletins and found something interesting and worthwhile to read in them.

Our purpose was and will be to inform all earthquake engineers and related professionals in Europe and abroad about the activities of EAEE, about the earthquake engineering research and investigations going in our member countries, and about the important issues related to earthquake engineering research and practice.

During these four years, we have witnessed relatively large number of damaging earthquakes. We have acquired important experiences and large amount of instrumental and observational data related to earthquake phenomena, path and site effects and structural response from these earthquakes. We had better opportunities to carry out detailed post earthquake investigations and related research projects. We are better equipped to mitigate earthquake hazard compared to four years ago. But we still have a long way to go to be fully capable in eliminating the earthquake damage to our existing buildings, lifeline systems, historical structures, and transportation systems. We have to work together and share our experiences and related data to improve our understanding and to achieve better tools in analysing the earthquake response of all the engineering structures.

Within this framework, the major aim of EAEE is to promote regional cooperation among scientists and engineers in the field of earthquake engineering by holding regular conferences every four years in Europe, holding regular regional seminars for young scientists and engineers; exchanging information and extending technical cooperation by networks established via working groups and task groups; cooperating with the activities of other international societies and organisations.

At this point of time, I like to express our thanks to all contributed to these Bulletins by forwarding us interesting articles about their research projects, their views, about conferences and workshops they organised or took part, about earthquakes in their countries, about the activities of their National Organisations and about earthquake related activities in their countries. Special thanks to Task Group Coordinators and Conveners who sent us articles about their TG or WG activities.

We hope your support will continue in the future and with your contributions we will be able to improve the contents of the EAEE Bulletins.

Atilla M. Ansal