MEETING OF THE ESC COUNCIL
Thursday, July 22, 1999

Minutes of the ESC Business meeting in Birmingham 22 July 1999

Present: L Mendes Victor, P Suhadolc, D Giardini, A Walker, G Sobolev, A Ansal, B Dost, D Slejko, C Browitt, J Zschau, R Steffansson, R Sleeman, Y Gitterman, J Havskov, C Trifu, H Aichele, F Riviere, C Papaioannou, T Van Eck etc

1. L Mendes Victor presented the Lisbon conference, 10-15 September, 2000. He explained the facilities and the two conference tours: to mainland Portugal and the Azores. A a visit to the laboratory having a shaking table would also be arranged

2. P Suhadolc outlined a new proposal to create symposia which would be outside the main subcommissions’ topics and, particularly, if they had a special relevance to the host country. Examples are tsunami hazards, the use of satellites and early warnings and these are proposed for the Lisbon meeting. J Zschau suggested that the tsunami and earthquake early warning topics should be combined to ensure there would be sufficient contributions. C Browitt proposed that we leave the decision in this to the programme committee. D Giardini noted that if damage scenarios are included, then early warnings should have sufficient support as an independent special symposium. He proposed also, the topic "hotspots" with reference to Iceland and the Azores. The proposed list (provisional conveners) is, therefore:

Tsunami hazards (L Mendes-Victor)

Use of satellites in seismology (J Zschau)

Early warning systems and real time damage assessment (D Giardini)

Hotspots (R Stefansson)

3. P Suhadolc showed the list of symposia proposals that he had received, to date, for inclusion in the Lisbon programme. These were extended by those present. P Suhadolc will distribute this list to members for refinement and extension. He will continue to accept proposals until the end of October 1999 following which the Bureau will draft the programme for comment before finalisation in January 2000. The following list was prepared and presented at the meeting:

WSA – Historical Seismology (M Stucchi and C Hammerl)

WSA – Seismogeographical Regionalisation (G Leydecker)

WSB - Manual of seismological observatory Practice (P Bormann)

SCB - Microseisms and seismic noise (E Hjortenberg)

WSB – Data Exchange in Europe (B Dost and F Riviere)

WSB – Seismological aspects of CTBT (Y Gitterman)

WSB – Historical instrumentation and documents in Seismology (G Ferrari)

WSC – Paleoseismology (M Meghraoui)

WSC – Behaviour of Active Faults (M Meghraoui)

WSC – Moment Tensor Determination (C-I Trifu)

SCD - Structure of the west Mediterranean (P Maguire and J Mechie)

SCD – Lithospheric structure of the Atlantic Margins: active vs passive (P Maguire and J Meichie)

SCD – Tomography of subducting slabs (E Kisling and W Spakman)

SCE – Crustal transients related to large earthquakes (R Stefansson, J Zschau and P Bernard)

SCE – Physics of earthquakes: Experimental and numerical modelling (G Sobolev)

SCF – Earthquake hazard and risk scenarios (D Giardini)

D Slejko reported that his subcommission, SC-F will be meeting on Saturday 24 July and he will provide more titles next week.

In response to a request for ideas on themes for the Hanoi meeting, J Zschau proposed "Physics of the earthquakes process".

4. Following some discussion on the registration fee for the Lisbon meeting, L Mendes Victor advised that it would be similar to that levied in previous years. D Giardini and C Browitt proposed that the student fee should be as low as possible and that recent graduates (within 12 months of the meeting) should be treated as students. This strategy was agreed with comments that new graduates had new research to offer and that they may be available for employment.

Alice B Walker

ESC Assistant Secretary

26 July 1999