After the coordination of Task Group 5 on “Seismic Isolation of Structures” (TG5) has been entrusted to me in 2001, its activities mainly concerned the organization (jointly with the Italian Working Group on Seismic Isolation – GLIS – of the Italian National Association for Earthquake Engineering – ANIDIS) of the "7th International Seminar on Seismic Isolation, Passive Energy Dissipation and Active Control of Vibrations of Structures”, which was held at Assisi (Italy) on October 2 to 5, 2001. This Report is an overview and summary of such a Seminar. It only very slightly differs from the Preface which has been published in the Seminar Proceedings. The background, scope, attendance, main technical and organizational features and conclusions of the Seminar and the associated International Exhibition and technical meetings and visits are summarized in this Report. Some remarks are also reported on the foundation of the new world association on the innovative anti-seismic techniques (ASSISi – Anti-Seismic Systems International Society), which was decided during the Seminar Closing Panel, and on the purposes, site and main features of the next event, the "8th World Seminar on Seismic Isolation, Energy Dissipation and Active Vibration Control of Structures", to be held at Yerevan, the Capital of Armenia, in 2003, which will be the first event to be organized in the framework of the ASSISi official events, as well. A summary of this Report has been submitted for presentation at the 12th European Conference on Earthquake Engineering as TG5 Report.

1. FOREWORD

After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the first reaction of the organizers of the Seminar had been to cancel it, as a token of mourning, since its beginning was scheduled less than three weeks after such events.

However, as stressed in the Final Announcement of the Seminar (installed in Internet at the address http://192.107.65.2/glis on September 24, 2001) and reminded in the information on the main results of the Seminar (installed in Internet at the same address on October 31, 2001), they later came to the conclusion that the Seminar had to be confirmed. The reasons for this decision were explained by the Seminar Chairman in a massage entitled “Assisi Seminar: we shall go on” that he widely distributed by e-mail on September 19, 2001 and was later attached to the Final Announcement and also kept in the aforesaid information on the Seminar results. Several experts from various countries immediately expressed their full agreement on this decision, none provided negative comments.

Before September 11, 2001, many experts from various countries had confirmed their participation in the Seminar, which stressed the great worldwide interest in the Seminar topics: as mentioned in the Announcements, at that time the organizers expected more than 300 participants. However, due to the aforesaid events, several experts obviously cancelled their participation in the last two weeks of September 2001.

Although the organizers very well understood the reasons of these colleagues, in the Final Announcement they expressed their hope that the Seminar could be still sufficiently correctly held, with the necessary international participation, according to its aims (contrary to those of terrorists) of contributing to the assessment of a better and safer world for everybody and reaffirming the willingness of our scientific community to strengthen international cooperation, by saying NO to terror and hate.

The decision of confirming the Seminar (while many other scientific events scheduled for the same period were cancelled) was repaid by an international participation which can be certainly judged as excellent (with regard to both the quality and quantity of attendance), taking into account the dramatic situation which characterized the Seminar period. In fact, only very few were the most renowned experts at the Seminar topics who did not attend and the Seminar was quite successful.

2. SITE, DATES AND ORGANIZATIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND MAIN FEATURES OF THIS AND THE PREVIOUS SEMINARS

According to the aforesaid decision, the 7th International Seminar on Seismic Isolation, Passive Energy Dissipation and Active Control of Vibrations of Structures was held at Grand Hotel Assisi, located at Assisi, in the Perugia Province (Italy), on October 2-5, 2001, as planned.  Grand Hotel Assisi is a modern very peaceful and fancy four stars hotel in the environs of the city of Assisi (about 30 minutes by foot from the center), with a marvellous view on the hills, provided with excellent conference rooms and spaces for the exhibition and poster presentations.

The Seminar duration was half day longer than for the previous events, as made necessary by the large number of oral presentations which had been planned. It is noted that the Seminar was held in particularly attractive dates: in fact, October 4 is the feast of San Francis, the Patron of Italy. However, for this reason, the Seminar period was very high season at Assisi, which required particular attention to the organizational aspects, in particular to hotel accommodation.

The Assisi Seminar was the seventh International Seminar (the third held in Italy) dealing with the innovative anti-seismic (IAS) techniques. The previous ones had taken place at:

· San Francisco (USA) in 1989;

· Nara (Japan) in 1991;

· Capri (Italy) in 1993;

· Santiago (Chile) in 1995;

· Taormina (Italy) in 1997;

· Cheju (Korea) in 1999.

While the aforesaid previous six Seminars had been all organized in the framework of the technical events following the International Conferences on Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (SMiRT), the Assisi Seminar, as recommended at Cheju in 1999, was organized as an independent event. This decision was based on the great interest in holding the 7th Seminar, rather than in the USA (where the 2001 SMiRT Conference had been planned), in an Italian area like Umbria Region, which had suffered severe earthquake damage in 1997-98 and where new important applications of the IAS techniques had been just completed or were already in progress at the time of the Cheju Seminar. More precisely, very attractive was judged at Cheju the possibility of organizing the Seminar at Assisi, where the restoration of the worldwide famous “Basilica Superiore” of St. Francis was being completed by making use, for the first time in the world, of Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) devices, in addition to innovative shock transmitters (it is well known that the 1997 earthquake had severely damaged the Basilica, including famous frescos of Cimabue and Giotto). In addition, Assisi and its surroundings (like the entire Umbria Region) are very nice and historically quite interesting.

Although the Assisi Seminar was organized as an independent event, the week preceding that of the 5th World Congress on Joint, Bearings and Seismic Systems for Concrete Structures (Rome, October 7-11, 2001) was selected to hold it, in order to make it easier to interested experts to participate in both events, which partly covered the same topics (in addition, Assisi is not too far from Rome).

It is worthwhile stressing that organizing the 7th Seminar as an independent event was possible thanks to the already very well assessed international relations at worldwide level and internationally fully agreed and suitably tested organizational approach through the organization of the previous Seminars. Thus, although the Seminar Chairman was able to confirm his availability to organize the Seminar only in January 2001 (when the indispensable funding was confirmed), then not much time was needed to establish the necessary International and National Committees and agree in such frameworks on the main features of the Seminar and its Program. Consequently, in March 2001 it was possible to prepare and widely distribute (especially by e-mail) the First Announcement of the Seminar, which contained the Call for Papers for the Poster Session, the preliminary Oral Program and all information necessary for attending the Seminar (also concerning hotel accommodation, how to reach the site, companion program, etc.). This information certainly reached most of the interested experts, thanks to the relations established when organizing the previous Seminars and the Support of the EAEE.

After a first revision, this updated Announcement was installed in Internet, at the already mentioned address, on April 10, 2001. There, it was updated three more times before the Seminar (on May 8, July 19 and September 24, 2001), by including more and more information, especially with regard to the detailed Seminar Program (information on each of these updates was again widely distributed by e-mail, but without any need for attaching the updated Announcement itself any more). The last update of September 24, 2001 was, as mentioned, the Final Announcement.

The Internet site of the Seminar was contacted more than 3,000 times, which confirms both the great interest in the Seminar topics and adequacy of the organizational approach.

3. ORGANIZERS

Similar to the two previous events held in Italy, the Assisi Seminar was organized by the Italian Working Group on Seismic Isolation (GLIS) of the Italian National Association for Earthquake Engineering (ANIDIS), with the cooperation of  “Ente per le Nuove tecnologie, l’Energia e l’Ambiente” (ENEA - Italian Agency for New Technology, Energy and the Environment), “Agenzia Nazionale per la Protezione dell’Ambiente” (ANPA - Italian National Agency for the Protection of the Environment) and several further Italian, foreign and international institutions, associations and companies. Furthermore, for this Seminar, Task Group 5 on Seismic Isolation of Structures (TG5) of the European Association for Earthquake Engineering (EAEE) joined GLIS as main organizer.

The main co-organizers of the Seminar which supported GLIS and EAEE-TG5 were, more precisely, the following 11 (9 Italian and 2 international) institutions and 2 international associations:

· ENEA – Italy;

· ANPA – Italy;

· “Facoltà di Architettura dell’Università degli Studi di Ferrara” (Faculty of Architecture of the University of Ferrara) – Italy;

· “Facoltà di Ingegneria dell’Università degli Studi di Perugia” (Faculty of Engineering of the University of Perugia) – Italy;

· International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA);

· International and European Associations for the Control of Structures (IASC & EACS);

· Joint Research Center at Ispra (JRC) of the European Commission (EC);

· “Ordini degli Architetti e degli Ingegneri delle Province di Perugia e Terni” (Orders of Architects and Engineers of Perugia and Terni Provinces)– Italy;

· “Servizio Sismico Nazionale” (SSN – Italian National Seismic Survey) – Italy.

Furthermore, the other co-organizers were the following 42 Institutions, associations and companies of 23 countries, which are listed below in alphabetical order for each country:

· American University of Armenia – Armenia;

· University of Applied Sciences at Vienna – Austria;

· “Université Libre de Bruxelles” (Free University of Brussels) – Belgium;

· “Universidad de Chile” (University of Chile) at Santiago – Chile;

· National Taiwan University – Taiwan;

· Stevenson and Associates – Czech Republic;

·“Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique” (CEA– French Agency for Atomic Energy), Research Center of Saclay – France;

·  Maurer Söhne – Germany;

·  University of Patras and University of Thessaloniki– Greece;

·  Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) – India;

·  International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (IIEES) – Iran;

· ANSALDO, “Associazione Costruttori Italiani Dispositivi di Vincolo Strutturale” (ACEDIS– Association of Italian Manufacturers of Structural Restraint Devices), ENEL.HYDRO-ISMES, “Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra dell’Università di Trieste” (Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Trieste), “Università degli Studi di Pavia” (University of Pavia) and “Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza” (University of Rome “La Sapienza”) – Italy;

·     Institute of Industrial Science of Tokyo University, Japan Society of Seismic Isolation (JSSI), Japan Panel on Structural Response Control, Science University of Tokyo, Tokyo Institute of Technology and Waseda University – Japan;

· Korea Earthquake Engineering Research Center (KEERC), Korea Panel on Structural Control and Monitoring & Seoul National University – Korea;

· National University of Mexico – Mexico;

· Robinson Seismic Limited – New Zealand;

· “Instituto Superior Técnico” (IST – High Technical Institute) at Lisbon – Portugal;

·  Guangzhou University – P.R. China;

· Center of Capital Construction, Ost-Seism and Earthquake Engineering Research Center of the Ministry of Construction  (EERC) – Russia;

·  Technical University of Catalonia at Barcelona – Spain;

·  Mimar Sinan University at Istanbul – Turkey;

·  Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre (TARRC) and Rubber Consultants – United Kingdom;

· American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), The State University of New York at Buffalo, University of California at Berkeley (UBC), U.S. Panel on Structural Control Research and University of Southern California at Los Angeles – USA.

It is noted that the number of co-organizing partners was rather larger than for the previous Seminar and that they represented almost all countries that are presently involved in the development and application of the IAS techniques: according to the information provided above, represented in the International Committees were altogether 23 countries, 2 international Institutions, as well as 3 international, 1 US and 2 national associations.

4. SPONSORSHIPS AND FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS

Sponsorships or financial contributions were provided to the Assisi Seminar by the 17 Institutions or companies from 4 countries (Germany, Italy, Japan and Turkey) which are listed below in alphabetical order:

·  ENEA – Italy;

·  ANPA – Italy;

·  ACEDIS – Italy;

·  Astaldi Turkish Branch – Turkey;

·  Bridgstone Corporation – Japan;

·  Banca dell’Umbria – Italy;

·  Colussi Perugia company – Italy;

·  ENEL.HYDRO company – Italy;

·  fischerwerke Artur Fischer Gmbh & Co. KG– Germany;

· “Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia” (Foundation “Cassa di Risparmio” of  Perugia)– Italy;

·  Grifo Insurance Brokers, Perugia – Italy;

· “Impresa Generale di Restauro Pouchain” (Pouchain General Restoration Company), Rome– Italy;

·  “Impresa Lunghi” (Lunghi Building Company), Assisi – Italy;

· “Istituto Edilizia Residenziale Pubblica (IERP) di Perugia”  (Institute for Public  Residential Building of Perugia Province) – Italy;

·  Maurer Söhne manufacturing company – Germany;

·  NUOVA V.M. company – Italy;

· “Regione dell’Umbria” (Umbria Region) – Italy.

 5. OTHER PATRONAGES

The Assisi Seminar was held under the auspices of the EC.

Furthermore, in addition to ENEA, ANPA and Umbria Region, patronage without financial contribution was also provided to the Assisi Seminar by the following further 7 Italian Institutions:

· “Ministero dell’Ambiente” (Italian Ministry for the Environment);

· “Regione Emilia-Romagna” (Emilia-Romagna Region);

· “Comune di Assisi” (City of Assisi);

· “Provincia di Perugia” (Province of Perugia);

·“Soprintendenza per i Beni Ambientali, Architettonici, Artistici e Storici (B.AA.AA.AA.SS)” dell’Umbria (Superintendence for Cultural Heritage of Umbria Region);

· “Sacro Convento di San Francesco in Assisi” (Holy Monastery of St. Francis at Assisi);

·  IERP of Terni Province.

6. BACKGROUND

Nowadays, most innovative techniques for the passive control of seismic vibrations - namely base and floor seismic isolation (SI), passive energy dissipation (ED) and provisional hydraulic coupling (HC) by means of shock transmitters - are considered to be already fully mature technologies of providing a mitigation of seismic damage for civil structures and equipment and have proven to be reliable and cost-effective for many structures such as bridges and viaducts, civil buildings, cultural heritage and critical facilities. With regard to the ED systems, several types of devices were recently developed and optimized, like viscous, elastic-plastic, viscoelastic and electromagnetic systems, as well as systems using SMAs and other smart materials.

There are already approximately two thousands applications of SI, ED and HC in various countries, which concern not only new constructions but also several retrofits of existing important structures, including cultural heritage, as initially judged necessary especially after the Loma Prieta (1989), Northridge (1994) and Kobe (1995) earthquakes and more recently, after those which struck Italy in 1997-98 and Greece, Taiwan, Turkey, Central America and India in 1999-2000.

It is worthwhile stressing that, as shown at Cheju, the IAS techniques are of great interest not only for highly seismic countries, but also for areas characterized by low or moderate seismicity.

The design and behavioural experience concerning the large civil buildings and bridges and viaducts provided with SI, ED and HC devices (for which the applications of such IAS systems are the most numerous) is extremely important for widely extending the use of these techniques to other extremely important application fields, like the cultural heritage, ordinary apartment buildings and industrial facilities, including the nuclear plants and other high risk facilities (e.g. some chemical plants). In fact, the applications in these fields are not very numerous yet, although some of them to high risk facilities are quite important and several new projects are in a rather advanced development stage.

In addition, the progress of active, hybrid and especially, semi-active vibration control techniques, for which important projects are now in progress in various countries, has already led to some promising results, not only for the control of wind-induced vibrations, but also for seismic protection.

The only remarkable still remaining problems for the passive IAS techniques which were identified at Cheju concerned the design rules for structures provided with such systems. In fact, although design rules or guidelines were already available in most countries, they were still different in the different countries, frequently still penalized the use of the IAS systems with respect to the conventional design and their application still required heavy approval processes. For the non-passive control systems the problems were even worse; in fact, these techniques were not considered by design rules.

International cooperation and detailed exchange of information and experience in both civil field (including cultural heritage) and the industrial (nuclear and non-nuclear) field are extremely important for the correct development and application of all the above-mentioned IAS techniques. To this aim, at San Francisco in 1989, Italian, Japanese and US experts started organizing an International Seminar on the IAS techniques. This first Seminar mainly dealt with SI of the nuclear reactors. Since then, this Seminar has been held every two years, as already mentioned at Nara (Japan) in 1991, Capri (Italy) in 1993, Santiago (Chile) in 1995, Taormina (Italy) in 1997 and Cheju (Korea) in 1999. The Seminar objectives were gradually extended from the nuclear reactors to the other types of structures and from SI to the other vibration control techniques. More and more experts from more and more countries and International Institutions (the EC and the IAEA) joined the International Organizing Committee. 

The aim of the Assisi Seminar was the further strengthening of the already established good basis for international collaboration for research, transfer of technology and information, and implementation in practice of SI, ED, HC and SMAs, as well as dissemination of information among the population in seismic prone countries to promote implementation of the IAS techniques in retrofitting or new construction of housing.

7. SCOPE OF THE SEMINAR AND ITS ACHIEVEMENT

The 7th Seminar was organized based on the increasing success of the previous ones and according to the recommendations made by participants in the Closing Panel of the last Seminar at Cheju in 1999. It provided again an opportunity for the exchange of updated, detailed information concerning the state-of-the-art on the development and applications of the IAS techniques.

Similar to the previous events, topics covered by the Assisi Seminar were SI, ED, provisional HC and systems formed by SMA devices. In addition, as at Cheju, the development and applications of active, semi-active and hybrid control of seismic and non-seismic vibrations and the critical issues concerning the application of IAS techniques in low and moderate seismic areas were dealt with.

With regard to the passive control techniques, particular attention was devoted to the following issues, the importance of which had been identified at Cheju:

· Extension of retrofit using the IAS techniques;

· Improvement of studies concerning IAS systems applicable to cultural heritage;

· Improvement of knowledge and development of systems for vertical SI;

· Promotion of more applications to hospitals and chemical plants and components;

· Wide extension of application from strategic to apartment buildings;

· Performance of adequate monitoring;

· Improvement of knowledge on seismic input, in particular for near-field earthquakes (how correct is this point was confirmed by the 1999 earthquake in Turkey);

· Improvement of studies concerning some reliability and uncertainty issues which had not been yet fully analyzed (including scale effects for qualification tests, the behaviour of the IAS devices at earthquake levels exceeding the design value and failure modes, at extremely violent beyond design earthquakes, of structures provided with the IAS systems);

· Consideration of other sources of vibrations which may damage or weaken structures, for instance, traffic;

· Comparison of design rules and guidelines applicable in the different countries;

· Issues related to the applications in the low and moderate seismicity areas.

To this aim, as recommended at Cheju, differently from previous Seminars, after the Sessions containing general lectures on state-of-the-art on application and R&D, specific Oral Sessions were devoted to lectures on the different kinds of structures of interest for application of the IAS techniques, namely:

· bridges and viaducts;

· strategic and important buildings such as hospitals, emergency management centers and schools;

· ordinary apartment buildings;

· cultural heritage;

· high risk nuclear;

· other industrial plants, chemical high risk plants.

The main new ongoing R&D projects were also presented in the Oral Sessions, while more specific but important topics concerning R&D and single applications were presented in the Poster Session. As suggested at Cheju, invited lectures and contributed papers on applications contained sufficiently detailed reference to seismic input, the codes used and problems faced in using them, as well as cost evaluations.

In addition, the proposal made at Cheju, to develop international design guidelines for structures provided with the IAS systems (which also explain such systems correctly and leave official codes out of consideration) was taken into consideration and as a first action towards such a development, again as suggested at Cheju, English translations of the related national design rules and guidelines were collected by the organizers of the Seminar and made available to the participants; they are being collected into a volume to be published in 2002, in co-operation with SSN as editor (see Sect. 10.5).

Finally, it is worthwhile stressing that the collaborations established for the organization of the Seminar with the Regional Government of Umbria, the City of Assisi, the Province of Perugia, the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage of Umbria and the local Orders of Architects and Engineers ensured a more significant participation of governmental officials and designers, with respect to previous Seminars, as augured at Cheju.

8. HONOR, TECHNICAL, SCIENTIFIC AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITTEES

The organization of the Seminar was carried out by the GLIS and EAEE-TG5 Organizing Committee, which took advantage of the collaboration of the further following four Committees:

· The International Coordination Committee, formed by 1 member for each country or geographic area and international institution or association supposed to participate in the Seminar, as well as the Chairperson of the Rome Congress, who supported the Seminar Chairman for coordinating the organization of the Seminar and  Exhibition at an international level as far as the technical issues and attendance were concerned;

·  The International Technical-Scientific Committee, formed by the members of the previous Committee and 1 or more members belonging to each foreign or main Italian institution, association or company that collaborated to the organization of the Seminar as regards the technical issues;

· The Italian Organizing and Technical-Scientific Committee, formed by the Italian members of the previous Committees, the members of the GLIS Board and further experts (frequently associated to GLIS) belonging to the institutions, associations and companies located in Italy that collaborated to the organization of the Seminar as regards the technical, logistic and financial issues;

· The Honor Committee, formed by high level representatives of institutions that had granted their sponsorship or patronage to the Seminar.

The members of all these Committees have been listed in the first pages of the Seminar Proceedings.

9. COUNTRIES REPRESENTED IN THE SEMINAR AND PARTICIPANTS

The Assisi Seminar was attended by 237 experts from 25 countries, 2 international institutions and 1 European association, in addition to 10 non-technical members of the Secretariat (Table 1). Furthermore, as shown by Table 2, the invited speakers who attended the Seminar belonged to 19 countries or international institutions; the represented countries or international institutions were 24 by taking into account the co-authors of the given invited lectures, 31 by also considering the authors and co-authors of papers presented in the Poster Session and 33 by including the invited speakers of  Iran and New Zealand, who (in spite of their absence) provided their lectures and papers for publication in the Proceedings. The aforesaid number of participants included 16 selected students from countries (Chile, Germany, Italy, Korea and New Zealand/Peru), who were exempted from payment of the Seminar registration fee.

Among those expected, only three countries (Bangladesh, Iran and Portugal) were not represented by participants in the Seminar, in the first two cases due to last minute visa problems. It has been estimated that no shows due to the tragic events of September 11, 2001 concerned from 50 to 80 participants, mostly from non-European countries (especially from Japan and other Asiatic countries).

However, mainly thanks to the more than doubled number of Italians, the participation in the 7th Seminar at Assisi remained much larger than that in previous events: for instance, the number of participants in the 3rd Seminar at Capri and the 5th Seminar at Taormina had been 136 and 138, respectively, including the non-technical members of the Secretariat and that in the 6th Seminar at Cheju had been 130 (see Table 1). Furthermore, with respect to the Taormina Seminar, the number of participants from other United Europe (UE) countries increased by 50%, participants from European countries not belonging  to the UE were more numerous and also the number of non-European participants slightly increased, even as far as US and Japanese experts are concerned. These data stress the still increasing great worldwide interest in the IAS techniques.

For a matter of comparison, Table 1 also includes the number of experts from the various countries who attended the 5th World Congress on Joints, Bearings and Seismic Systems for Concrete Structures at Rome the week after that of the Seminar. This comparison shows that the events of September 11, 2001 even more severely affected the attendance in this Congress: in fact, in spite of the larger number of topics covered by the Congress, the overall number of participants (204) was only half that expected prior to such events (approximately 400) and attendance was very low especially for quite seismic Asiatic countries such as Japan (4 participants, against the 28 participants in the Assisi Seminar).

Approximately 100 participants in the Assisi Seminar were accommodated at Grand Hotel Assisi, where the organizers had pre-booked such a number of rooms; in addition, C.S.C., on behalf of the organizers, had pre-booked several  rooms at two further hotels near Assisi, as necessary due to the very high season period of the Seminar. Bus transportation between these hotels and Grand Hotel Assisi was ensured by the organizers. Bus transportation was also ensured by the organizers for the technical visits, to reach the site of the characteristic dinner and for the companion program (the latter and the characteristic dinner were organized by C.S.C. on behalf of the organizers). 

10. SEMINAR PROGRAM AND WORKS

10.1 General Features

The Seminar lasted three and a half days, starting in the afternoon of Tuesday, October 2, 2001 at 3:30 p.m. It was preceded, as usual, by a preparation meeting of the Session Chairpersons and Panellists.

It is noted that the IAEA, which had participated in the organization of the previous Seminars of Taormina and Cheju jointly with its Research Coordinated Programs (CRPs) on seismic issues, confirmed its continued interest in the topic of the Seminar by joining the main organizing team of that of Assisi, as well. In particular, the IAEA confirmed its agreement for informal discussions, at Assisi, between its representative (Mr. A.Rinejskii) and those of the countries participating in the CRP on “Intercomparison of Analysis Methods for Predicting the Behaviour of Seismically Isolated Nuclear Structures”, concerning the Final Report of such a CRP.

In addition, taking advantage of the presence, at Assisi, of most experts working at the IAS techniques, some technical meetings concerning the development of European design rules for IAS systems and ongoing EC-funded Projects of the development of such systems took place there in conjunction with the Seminar (Sect. 12). Support to their organization was provided by the Seminar organizers. Meetings of European consortia preparing proposals for two new EC-funded Projects (IN-DEPTH and VAT-IMAGE) were also held during the Seminar. 

Similar to the two previous events of Taormina and Cheju and according to the features and purposes of the Seminar, also that at Assisi consisted of:

· Oral Sessions (where only invited lectures were given), preceded by Welcome Addresses and followed by a Closing Panel and Closing Remarks;

· Poster Presentations of both invited and contributed papers;

· an International Exhibition.

In addition, the Assisi Seminar was preceded and followed by technical visits, which were offered by the organizers and some sponsors (see Sect. 12).

 

Table 1. Participants (S = on-site secretariat members)

Country / International Institution	Capri (1993) 3rd Seminar	Taormina (1997) 5th Seminar	Cheju (1999) 6th Seminar	Assisi (2001) 7th Seminar	Rome (2001) 5th Congress
Armenia	-	-	-	1	-
Australia	-	-	-	-	5
Austria	-	1	1	5	2
Belgium	-	-	-	3	2
Brazil	1	-	-	-	3
Bulgaria	1	-	-	-	-
Byelorussia	-	-	-	-	3
Canada	2	1	1	-	8
Chile	2	3	2	2	-
Colombia	-	-	-	-	1
Croatia	-	-	-	-	4
Czech Republic	-	-	-	1	-
Denmark	-	-	-	-	1
EACS / IASC	-	-	1	1	-
EC	2	2	1	5	-
Finland	-	-	-	-	1