Report of the EAEE Vice-President – Professor A.S.Elnashai

Below is a summary of activities undertaken by the Vice-President and related to the scope of interest of the European Association of Earthquake Engineering, its Working Groups and its Executive Committee.

1. On March 5-4, 2001, a meeting of the FIB Seismic Design Commission (Commission 7) took place at EFPL, Lausanne, chaired by Professor P.Pinto, Convener, and Professors G.M.Calvi and M.N.Fardis, as editors of two state-of-the-art reports under preparation by the Commission. The meeting was hosted by Professor M.Badoux. The two reports, on Seismic Assessment and Retrofit of RC Buildings and Displacement-Based Design of RC Buildings, are due for completion in March 2002 and will be published and distributed by FIB. The Vice-President is writing a chapter on each, one on repair and retrofitting techniques (in the Assessment report) and another on earthquake input motion (for the Design report). A follow-up meeting of the Commission has taken place in Seattle, USA, also attended by the Vice-President, hosted by Professor J.Moehle, UC Berkeley.

2. The Vice-President was appointed Associate Director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center, based at the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was also appointed as Director of the Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory and a professor of structural engineering at the same university. The appointments are effective 1 July 2001. Due to this, the Vice-President seeks the permission of the Executive Committee to be released from being President-designate from September 2002. He would be grateful if he were allowed to continue to serve as Vice-President until the European Conference in London. Thereafter, a new President should be selected to succeed Dr.P.Bisch, the current EAEE President.

3. The two European networks on earthquake engineering (ECOLEADER - a consortium of European large scale testing facilities coordinated by Professor R.Severn and SAFERR - a 13-strong earthquake engineering European research and training network coordinated by the Vice-President) continue to thrive and make significant advances. Meetings of the networks took place on 12 and 13 February in Rome, hosted by Professor P.Pinto and attended by all partners and their young researchers. This was the first meeting after the official launch of the network in July 2000 in London, with the third meeting scheduled to take place in Lyon on 18-20 September 2001, hosted by Professor J-M.Reynouard. ECOLEADER had their Round Table in Belgirate, Italy, also in February, and the meeting was attended by the Vice-President who made a presentation on educational needs in Europe with regard to earthquake risk reduction. The Vice-President also delivered a white paper on earthquake engineering networks in Europe and their role in advancing seismic risk mitigation. A short meeting of SAFERR also took place in Belgirate. The SAFERR meeting in Lyon will be followed by a Round Table of ECOLEADER partners.

4. Preparations for the European Conference in London in September 2002 are progressing very well. In total, the Technical Affairs Committee received about 800 abstracts. Approximately 10% were not accepted. Whereas all abstracts were reviewed by one international reviewer, the candidates for rejection were re-assessed by the Vice-President (as Chairman of the Technical Affairs Committee) and Dr.Bommer, Deputy Chairman of the Committee, to insure fairness and rigor. The Keynote lecturers have been contacted and sent the format of their papers, so were all authors with accepted papers. The division amongst oral and poster presentations will await the final paper submissions. Wednesday of the conference week has been set aside for EAEE meetings, special recent earthquakes sessions, European initiatives, EERI sessions and other earthquake engineering activities not included in the formal agenda.

5. A new research network has been approved by the European Commission (SPEAR Seismic Performance Assessment and Rehabilitation). This is a 1.1 million euros network comprising seven universities and a company. SPEAR is about to start and will continue for 3 years. The Vice-President will continue to be a partner in SPEAR through a visiting post at Imperial College, and also with the support of Professor N.Ambraseys at Imperial. The scope of work includes full scale testing of structures at JRC Ispra and co-operation with BRI - Tsukuba, Japan.

6. On earthquake education, the international ROSE school, based in Pavia, Italy, was launched in January 2002 with MSc and PhD programmes in earthquake engineering, and has had its first management committee meeting in May 2001. The Vice-President is a founding member (alongside a number of colleagues from Europe, in addition to an international constituency) of the school and will be teaching there in May 2002. Whilst this is a positive and welcome addition to earthquake engineering training of young engineers in Europe, it is with regret that the Vice-President reports the suspension of the MSc in Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics (recently re-launched as the MSc in Earthquake Engineering Risk Management) at Imperial College. The MSc was designed and launched by the Vice-President, with the support of Professor P.J.,Dowling (then Head of Department) and Professor N.N.Ambraseys, in 1987. In its 14 years, the course was recognized as the most targeted education and training programme in the subject not only in Europe but worldwide. It has had students from 17 countries and as impressive alumni list of about 140 students or more.

7. The Journal of Earthquake Engineering, edited by the Vice-President and Professor Ambrasyes, continues to grow. It is now entering its fifth successful year, and has been accepted in the Science Citation Index and several other abstracting agencies. It will continue to be managed jointly by the two editors, supported by the three associate editors Professors B.Bolt, K.Kawashima and G.M.Calvi and the editorial board. The journal will be run from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The new Administration Manager assisting the Vice-President is Helen Agans (email: hagans@uiuc.edu) to whom all correspondence should be addressed. The journal will continue to maintain its international flavor, but also keep a keen eye on European development in earthquake engineering. The objective of having a geographical and a technical balance is to be pursued, as before.

The Vice-President wishes to thank members of the Executive Committee and in particular the President (Dr.P.Bisch), the ex-President (Professor R.Flesch) and the General Secretary (Professor A.Ansal) for their generous support, the trust vested in him and the lively discussions he has had with them regarding the future of EAEE. He pledges to continue to serve the European earthquake engineering community and support the work and initiatives of the Executive Committee.