Dear colleagues,
It
is hard to believe that it will be soon four years that we had our 10th
ECEE in Vienna. Atilla Ansal asked me to summarise these four years and
especially my experience. As we are getting older, he suggested, the view could
also be a little bit more philosophical.
Hence,
I want to go back to the roots of my presidency. Our Austrian Association for
Earthquake Engineering is a small association but some of the members are very
active. Hence a small group around Franz Ziegler and Rainer Flesch wanted to
organise the 10th ECEE and prepared a bid. I was sent to Moscow and
during the voting process at the General Assembly I got more and more happy and
finally I was Vice President of EAEE. I remember the time in Moscow after the
election, at different occasions I had to give speeches and toasts, sometimes
it was a little bit difficult because I had to drink a lot of vodka at the same
time. But as a new Vice President, I had also big advantages, it was relatively
easy to get a functioning overhead projector for my presentation, which was
fortunately scheduled after the General Assembly. Back in Vienna, after some
weeks of delight, I had to start the work and especially to raise funds. We
formed a small but very powerful and effective team. I am especially happy that
we managed late but not too late to offer some considerable financial support
to colleagues from the former eastern countries. I think the conference was a
success an I was very proud to become the President of EAEE.
Since
our bulletin 15/2 in December 1996, I am now writing the column From the
President, this is the fourth time. I always was touching the four main
activities of EAEE, the European Conferences, the bulletin, regional seminars,
working groups and task groups and in addition I informed about the latest
developments in my personal scientific life.
Let
me start also as the out going president in the same way. When you will read
this column the 11th European Conference will be running. On behalf
of the Executive Committee, I want to address our warmest thanks to our French
colleagues for the enormous and excellent work they have done. I think that we
have really learned a lot from the 11th WCEE in Acapulco, where the organisers
managed for the first time to raise the status of the poster presentations.
Also at our conference the posters will be the main format for the
presentations. I hope that also the workshop- stile Special Sessions will be a
success. I myself initiated and organised part 1 of Eurocode 8 Special Session,
where we will have an overview by the chairman, visit of poster stands,
additional oral presentations and discussion of all posters.
Concerning
bids for the next European Conference, up to now I know only the bid from UK.
This is a very strange situation, it is the first time that we have only one
candidate. I am aware of the problems, a lot of time and money must be invested
by the member association organising a conference and probably it will become
more and more difficult in the future. Nevertheless, I hope that we will find also
for our future conferences always at least one candidate.
The
next topic is our bulletin. The main work is done in an excellent way by our
Secretary General Atilla Ansal, we have to be very grateful to him. Not only
that the whole editorial work is done by himself, he found also funds in his
country to publish 1500 copies which are distributed to our National Delegates.
He also takes care for the Internet-EAEE web Pages, where you can find all
published bulletins and all other EAEE documents. Probably the Internet will
become more and more important for the distribution of the bulletin. Since many
years the Associations of Germany, Austria and Switzerland publish together a
bulletin in German language for the information of their members (D-A-CH Bulletin).
During the General Assembly of the Austrian Association in May 1998, it was
suggested to discuss the idea to include the D-A-CH bulletin in the EAEE
bulletin. As the concept of both bulletins is to provide information about
Earthquake Engineering activities for the members, it should be possible to
combine the bulletins and hence to avoid unnecessary doubling of information.
In principle the D-A-CH related contributions could be prepared in English, but
it could also be discussed to allow a limited number of pages in other
languages (German, French, etc.) which can be understood by a considerable
number of readers.
I
am coming now to the Regional Seminars. The 18th Regional Earthquake
Engineering Seminar was held in Sept. 1995 in Lyon. It was located in Ecole
Centrale de Lyon, which is an engineering high school with particular interest
for civil engineering and mechanical engineering. The French Association for
Earthquake Engineering was in charge of the organisation, the local organising
committee was led by Prof. P. Labbe. Eighty five young scientists from 20
member countries of EAEE attended the seminar.
In
December 1997 the 19th European Regional Earthquake Engineering
Seminar was held in Cairo. It was organised by Prof. M. Sobaih and his team
from the Egyptian Society for Earthquake Engineering. Before the seminar the
world was shocked by the cruel terror act in Luxor. The situation caused also a
lot of activities within the Executive Committee of EAEE. Many participants
were concerned about their safety. I am very grateful to Prof. Amr Elnashai,
who provided good information which finally allowed to take the right decision
and to held the seminar. We had a very nice and fruitful time in Cairo. 10
lecturers and 20 participants from Europe attended the seminar. The seminar
attracted a large number of Egyptian participants, about 110, which is more
than the number of participants that attended the latest Egyptian National
Conference.
We
are pleased that we have preliminary proposals from Skopje, Germany and
Bulgaria to organise future European Regional Earthquake Engineering Seminars.
During the latest meeting of the Executive Committee the new Guidelines for
EAEE Regional Seminars prepared by the Secretary General were discussed,
adopted and approved for dissemination to all national delegates.
The
next topic is Working Groups and Task Groups. Atilla Ansal has reported all the
details in this bulletin. We have to be very grateful to him, because he
elaborated the greatest part of the draft for the reorganisation of EAEE
Working Groups as Task Groups. I think the reorganisation was a very important
action of the Executive Committee but it will take some longer time before the
advantages will clearly turn out. At the beginning we have planned 9 Task
Groups. Four of these Task Groups have become active. In June 1995 a meeting of
EAEE and ESC Joint Task Group 3 on “Seismic Risk and Earthquake Scenarios” took
place in Vienna. Fortunately I was in the position to provide some funding for
this meeting. Then the coordinator of TG 3 (Prof. M. Dolce) prepared a project
proposal to establish a network within the INCO-COPERNICUS program of EU.
Eleven institutions from our member countries participated to the proposal. The
proposal was accepted by EU in July 1997. Two project meetings were held in the
meantime.
During
the ESC General Assembly in Reykjavik, Sept. 1996, the EAEE and ESC Joint
Working Group on “Strong Motion” (Coordinator Prof. N. Ambraseys) was
established.
Since
Oct. 1995 the Joint Task Group of EAEE TG6 “Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering
and Microzonation” (Coordinator: Prof. A. Ansal) and ESC WG4 on “Microzonation”
held three meetings. The fourth meeting is scheduled during the 11th ECEE.
The
European Workshop on the “Seismic Behaviour of Asymmetric and Setback
Structures” was organised by Task Group TG8 on “Seismic Behaviour of Irregular
and Complex Structures” (Coordinator: Prof. A.Rutenberg) and was held in
Anacapri/Italy in Oct. 1996.
In
principle, each Task Group is established for the period between two European
Conferences. On the occasion of the following conference the Executive
Committee decides about a prolongation. Hence, the organisation is now much
more flexible and allows a better steering by the Executive Committee. The main
problem for all Task Groups is that first we have to find an active scientist
willing to devote his/her energy to activate the group and then he/she has to
find financial sources. It is one of the most important tasks of the
coordinator to look for possible funds. TG 3 was successful to get means from
an European program. The Executive Committee tried to start some lobbying in
Brussels, but this is not so easy. The problem is, that only projects (needing
a big amount of administrative work) but not the basic activities of Scientific
Associations can be funded from European Projects. I had several contacts with
DG XII / Environment and Climate / Natural Hazards, but unfortunately I cannot
report about any new possibilities. Hence for our Task Group activities we
should try to get national funding. I invite all colleagues, especially from
the richer western countries to start projects which mean a support for our
EAEE activities but which are financed by national funds. I am especially
hopeful that our very active French friends will come up with a proposal.
One
very positive example is the activity of the Icelandic National Society of
Earthquake Engineering to start intensive earthquake research in the South
Iceland Seismic Zone, which is a very promising geographical area for
earthquake engineering. It is a good starting position that they have a strong
motion network and instrumented buildings, hydropower plants, earth fill dams
and bridges. The project was established with participation of the Federation
of Municipalities in South Iceland and The Civil Defence of Iceland. The
project has in addition to its earthquake engineering aspects also a strong
socio-economic character. I am very proud, that members of EAEE have started a
project aiming towards a full scale computerised field laboratory, which will
be a large benefit for testing and training in the field of Earthquake
Engineering. Especially I have in mind all the young and active scientists from
our member countries, who will be very pleased to get the possibility for
training and cooperative research.
Concerning
UNESCO/NGO I want to thank our Secretary General, that he was very active to
get a better classification of EAEE within the international non-governmental
organisations. Central Office was informed in July 1998 by the Director of the
Division of Relations with International Organisations that EAEE was
transferred into the category named as “Informal Relations”.
After
talking about the basic tasks of EAEE I want to touch quickly the future of the
structural part of Earthquake Engineering, which is an important part of my
daily work. I think that the Structural - Dynamics - Community has already
tried to study each open question. But frequently the things we are doing are
too academic. Often we play too much around and forget what is really necessary
for practical use. We can use different methods of analysis (from quasi static
methods up to non-linear time history analysis), we can use a more or less
accurate structural model but we often have problems to predict the influence
of the selected approach on the quality of the results. Especially “average”
users of codes which are no Earthquake Engineering specialists, will find only
little help for selecting the most adequate approach for a given situation.
Although today it is possible to carry out a dynamic analysis of a complex
structure with a PC on the designer`s desk, this makes no sense in each case.
For very detailed structural models one needs a lot of input parameters, which
often can be estimated only roughly. Further, the assumed earthquake input will
always be a very rough approximation. Hence a very sophisticated design
procedure is not necessarily more realistic and it is questionable, if the
safety level of the structure can be really increased in this way. A research
project funded by the Austrian National Bank was carried out in the past. Five
actual buildings having different degrees of irregularity were selected. Each
building was modelled and analysed in several variants and the resulting internal
forces and displacements were compared. The goal was the elaboration of
guidelines for the selection of the most adequate procedure. It is obvious that
much more similar test applications will be necessary, before guidelines can be
established. Following this idea I initiated the Special Theme Session
“Evaluation and Improvement of Seismic Codes via Case Studies” in Acapulco. At
our 11th ECEE we will have the Eurocode 8 Special Session with part
1.1: Case Studies (adequate modelling and methods of analysis, experience from
(test-) applications) and with part 1.2: Q-Factors and Miscellaneous
Experience. I hope that I will convince as much people as possible that we need
much more similar work. I will also try again to get money from the Austrian
Fund for Scientific Research. The first attempt failed. The proposal was
rejected with the argument that the planned sensitivity- and case studies are
no scientific research work and no new knowledge can be expected. From the
formal point of view this is eventually O.K, but for me it is a crazy situation
that I probably would have got the money for a brand new “exotic” topic while
no funding is available to elaborate the “golden mean” between sophistication
and obtainable safety level, which would be very helpful for the practical
application.
I
am coming to the conclusions. I think, the period 1994 – 1998 was a fruitful
period for EAEE. Some new things have been initiated, but much work remains for
the future. EAEE is something like a big European family of specialists, which
are good friends at the same time. This is an excellent basis for a fruitful
work within Europe. I am sure that you will find in each ongoing or forthcoming
European Research Project in the field of Earthquake Engineering at least one
consortium partner, which is also well known within EAEE. I am very proud that
I had the honour to be the president of this association for the last four
years and I promise to do my best as Vice President within the next four years.
Rainer G. Flesch
President
August 1998