The 4^th European Workshop on the Seismic Behaviour of Irregular and Complex Structures

was held with success in Thessaloniki, Greece, from 26 to 27 August 2005. 

This was the fourth in a series of successful workshops organised by the EAEE TG8 (the third one was in Florence in 2002), and was held under the auspices of EAEE, the HSAE (Hellenic Society of Earthquake Engineering), and the Department of Civil Engineering of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The International Scientific Committee was co-chaired by Prof. Andreas Kappos of the Aristotle University and Prof. Victor Rutenberg from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, who is also the coordinator of EAEE TG8. Prof. Kappos also chaired to Organizing Committee (full member lists of the two committees, that included several well-known experts in Earthquake Engineering can be found at the Workshop website http://taz.civil.auth.gr/4ewics). A total of 115 participants registered to the Workshop, which far exceeded the attendance in previous such events. They came from a total of 15 different countries, mostly European (Greece and Italy being the two most represented ones), but also from non-European countries like the US, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Israel, and Iran.

The Workshop was organised in a number of technical sessions each focussing on a specific topic (within the general theme of irregular and complex structures), as follows:

§         Asymmetric one-storey buildings (5 presentations)

§         Asymmetric multistorey buildings (9 presentations)

§         Vertically irregular structures – Setback multistorey buildings (15 presentations)

§         Irregular and/or complex bridge structures (11 presentations)

§         Particular cases of irregularity/complexity in structures (5 presentations)

§         Seismically isolated and controlled asymmetric structures (4 presentations)

At the end of the second day, a panel session (with M. De Stefano, P. Fajfar, A. Kappos, A. Reinhorn, A. V. Rutenberg, W. K. Tso, as panelists) was organised and gave the workshop participants the opportunity to discuss a number of issues regarding the seismic analysis and assessment of irregular and/or complex structures and, notably, their treatment in seismic codes, which still remains a critical issue.

From the panel session of the Workshop (from left to right: Andrei Reinhorn, Victor Rutenberg, Andreas Kappos, Dick Tso, Mario De Stefano)