Speech by Vice-President Philippe Bisch
It is with a great pleasure that I see you are so many to have answered to our invitation and are present at this cardinal point of our European Association life, and I thank you for being here.
I would like to give particular thanks to those who come from countries which are not members of the European Association, and trust that their presence is due to the vitality of Earthquake Engineering on an international level. The European Conference is certainly a good place for intermediate contacts between the World Conferences.
As soon as the members of the European Association have decided, in Vienna, 4 years ago, to organise the XIth European Conference of Earthquake Engineering in France, and to entrust the French Association with its practical organisation, a brain storming group was set up to think of possible ways of organising the sessions. This group worked approximately one year with only one objective, which was to analyse the ways various international conferences developed their programs and to propose an innovative method for the present conference. This resulted in a general scheme which was submitted to the Executive Committee of the European Association and then adopted.
By the end of 1995, once the brain storming group had finished its activity, an Organising Committee was set up, and three years were not too much for dealing with all the aspects and come to the final result, that we all hope will give sufficient satisfaction to all the participants.
Let me come back to the organisation of the sessions. This brain storming had resulted in the idea that we should try other ways of presentation during the sessions, in avoiding successions of presentations of papers, which was the usual method in such international conferences up until recently.
That is why we have introduced other concepts in this organisation, mainly:
First, to organise the consistency and the continuity of sessions within each topic. This led to the designation of a coordinator per topic, whose role was to organise each topic as a kind of seminar within the conference, and to manage the selection of the papers allocated to his topic, selection which was made by the International Scientific Committee. So, for each topic, we shall have invited lectures, some oral presentations, workshops which have been defined at the initiative of each co-ordinator.
A second idea was that the scientific exchanges should be promoted, which resulted in more time dedicated to discussions within the sessions. So we have decided to propose, besides traditional sessions including oral presentations, workshops which include very short oral presentations completed by display of posters, with sufficient time left to discussions. This method implies a very important preparation for all the moderators, so that the discussions can be led in good conditions. It also implies a deeper implication of those chairing the sessions, their organisation being more complicated than in traditional sessions. Some of you have accepted to bear these burdens, and we should thank them for this work. Obviously, the efficiency of our works will be tightly linked to the preciseness of the organisation of each session and each topic. So I ask all the authors to respect strictly the allocated time, either for their oral presentations or in the workshops.
Another idea was that this organisation per topic with workshops was not compatible with too short periods of time. Therefore we have decided that the unit of time was at least the time between pauses, which is approximately ninety minutes, and, better, in most cases, the complete half day. Of course, you are free to make your own choices, but you should keep this basic unit of time in mind, so as to benefit as much as possible of the sessions, as in each case this unit of time is organised as a whole.
This rather new organisation should be considered as experimental, and its success is in the hands of all the actors. It will in some cases imply displacements between sessions rooms and locations of posters. But you will see, when you discover all the locations, that distances are small and that it is easy to get from one place to another.
I hope that this week will be a very good opportunity to enhance our good relationships, which are so important for the good development of our sciences, and, at the end, for the mitigation of this seismic risk which can be dreadful for populations.
The friendship and the consideration which prevail between us, beyond the few political problems which may exist, are very important factors for the development of our scientific knowledge and the exchanges of ideas. Of course, these exchanges will take place during the sessions, but all opportunities should be taken during this week to strengthen our relations. I hope that the social program will be an occasion to do so.
I hope that you will have a nice stay in Paris, and that you will be satisfied with the scientific works during the conference. If by luck we succeed in our enterprise and if, at the end, you keep good memories of this conference, I would like that you don't forget the important work which has been done by the team who prepared this conference during four years. First, the members of the Organising Committee:
First of all, those who have organised the work of the topics co-ordinators and of the International Scientific Committee : Pierre Labbé, chairman of the Scientific Committee, Alain Pécker and Jacky Mazars. They have done a wonderful job and succeeded in organising all the sessions in due time, which was a difficult challenge.
Then, the other members of the organising committee, in the alphabetic order : Darius Amir Mazaheri, the President of the French Association, who watched over the organisation very closely, Felix Darve, who was the wise man of our group, Françoise Gantenbein, who offered her wide experience acquired in the organisation of the last SMIRT, Bernard Halphen, who accommodated our meetings in his office, and helped us a lot in national and international contacts, Michel Kahan, who accepted the thankless but how much necessary function of treasurer, Jean-Marie Reynouard, who rarely missed a meeting of the committee, although he lives in Lyon, and brought his kind and clever advice, Pierre Sollogoub, who was very active for instance in the co-ordination of abstracts, but also in many other cases.
I would like also to congratulate and thank all the topics co-ordinators and the members of the International Scientific Committee.
I will also thank the general secretary of our conference, Françoise Bourgain, and her assistant, Séverine Dufour, because they had to support the numerous demands of the members of the Organising Committee, and nevertheless they managed to settle all the details of the organisation.
I would like to end this short acknowledgement in thanking all our sponsors. We don't know yet what the financial balance of the conference will be, but we already know that it could not have taken place without them. Their financial support has permitted to maintain the registration fees at a relatively low level, when compared with similar conferences in Western Europe, thus allowing a maximum of people to be present here. Their help also allowed for some financial support to some scientists who otherwise would have had problems to come, and, as vice-president of the European Association, I was pushing very much for this policy. Then, I warmly thank them again for their support.
I wish you a very good conference and a nice stay in Paris.