It is hard to believe that it will be soon four years that we had our 10th ECEE in Vienna. Since our bulletin 15/2 in December 1996 I was writing the column From the President. I always was touching the four main activities of EAEE, the Conferences, the bulletin, the regional seminars and working groups and task groups. Let me start also as the outgoing president in the same way.

First, 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 in organising this conference. I think that we have really learned a lot from the 11th WCEE in Acapulco, where the organiser 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.

I am coming now to the Regional Seminars. The 18th Regional Earthquake Engineering Seminar was held in Sept. 1995 in Lyon. 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, before going to Cairo. 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.

We are pleased that we have preliminary proposals from Skopje, Germany and Bulgaria to organise future European Regional Earthquake Engineering Seminars.

The next topic is Working Groups and Task Groups. We have to be very grateful to our Secretary General, 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, three of them are EAEE and ESC Joint Task Groups. You will find all details of their activities in the latest bulletin.

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 “Seismic Risk and Earthquake Scenarios” (coordinator Prof. M. Dolce) 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 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.

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 organizations. Central Office was informed in July 1998 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 aproach 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. I think we should be much more aware of this situation and provide more help for the selection of the adequate procedure for the “average“ users.

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.