Newsletters - October 2001

Occasional newsletter of the IUGG Commission on Geophysical Risk & Sustainability

One of the difficulties in dealing with international scientific organisations is the plethora of acronyms. This GeoRisk update is no different. To help the reader, a glossary of acronyms is given at the end.

During July I travelled to Europe and North America and managed to meet with all of the members of the executive of the GeoRisk Commission.

IGBP Open Science Meeting, Amsterdam
Prof.K. Takeuchi (Vice-chair of the GeoRisk Commission, and President of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, IAHS) and Tom Beer (Chair, GeoRisk Commission) independently attended the Global Change Open Science Meeting of the IGBP in Amsterdam. Prof. Takeuchi took part in a forum on future needs in water science. I had been invited by Prof. Richard Rockwell, organiser of a session on "Megacities and Global Change" to describe some of my own research work on life-cycle assessment of emissions from vehicles using alternative fuels.

At this meeting, ICSU, IGBP, IHDP and WCRP declared the birth of a new science - Sustainability Science. These groups are working together to foster sustainability science. These very public comments led me to consider how the geophysical community, IUGG, and the GeoRisk Commission can foster Sustainability Science. The IUGG and the GeoRisk commission has an ability to prepare hazard, vulnerability and exposure assessments. This expertise, which has largely been directed at the present-day situation, can readily use the same tools and techniques to investigate future scenarios.

Following on from this conference I managed to meet with Alik Ismael-Zadeh (Vice-chair of the GeoRisk Commission) in Germany. Alik's institution, the International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Science hosts the GeoRisk Commission web page, and our major project, the Webcyclopedia of Geophysical Risk and Hazard. Alik is a Board member of the European Association for Promotion of Science and Technology (EuroScience) and he invited the Commission to meet at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on 16 June 2002 as part of the Euroscience General Assembly in Budapest.

Crowding the Rim Summit, Stanford University
Both Grant Heiken (Secretary-General of the GeoRisk Commission) and Tom Beer attended the Crowding the Rim Summit organised by the US Geological Survey, Stanford University, the Pan-Pacific Council and the American Red Cross. IUGG was a supporting organization for this meeting, which brought together scientists and disaster managers from across the Pacific Rim of Fire. The Pacific has acquired that name because many of the countries along its rim are particularly subject to volcanoes and earthquakes.

The meeting started with a series of excellent and informative scientific briefings. Each participant was then assigned a confidential role for the RimSim simulation game in which they had to negotiate to arrange the funds for post-disaster reconstruction of a group of hypothetical countries.

This meeting also allowed me to meet with some of the supporters of the GeoRisk commission, such as Prof. David Jackson, Chair of the US National Committee of the IUGG and Scott Spaulding of the US National Research Council. It also provided an opportunity to meet Dr Fouadad Benderimad (EMI Chair) and to learn about the Earthquakes and Megacities Initiative (EMI) of the International Lithosphere Program (SCL/ILP), which is a committee of ICSU under joint IUGS, IUGG sponsorship. EMI operates by setting up "twin cities" that undertake formal exchanges and work towards the development of knowledge programs that involve officials from the cities and members of the cities research community. EMI will be holding a meeting in Shanghai in October 2002.

The web-site has undergone considerable artistic development. The general form has been agreed to. The web pages will now need appropriate content added to them. This will be the responsibility of each of the association representatives. Please have a look at the web page at:
http://www.mitp.ru/georisk and give some thought to the most appropriate material to include from your association.

The webcyclopedia project will be part of the GeoRisk Commission web site. We are working on the best way to access information that needs to be referenced spatially and by topic. Once the web mechanics have been determined, then the discipline editors will be asked to seek out geographic editors based, in the first instance, on the continents and the megacities.

2003 Symposia at the IUGG General Assembly, Sapporo, Japan (29 June to 11 July 2003)

The GeoRisk Commission is organizing an all-day all-union symposium on GeoRisk as part of the overall focus on "State of the Planet:frontiers and challenges". This session will be by invitation only. In addition, we will be proposing an inter-association symposium on the topic as a venue for contributed papers.

Grant Heiken and Tom Beer are the joint organizers of the symposia and welcome suggestions for speakers.

Vice-Chair Kuniyoshi Takeuchi is arranging for GeoRisk Commission involvement in the 3rd World Water Forum to be held in Japan in March 2003.

The Commission has, to date, been using the IUGG logo. It has been suggested that we need a new logo. The symbol heading this update has been proposed because it combines symbolic representations for many of the hazards that are being studied by IUGG associations.

Acronyms and abbreviations

This update is being sent to members of the GeoRisk committee. The committee consists of
i) Members of the GeoRisk Commission.
ii) Representatives of cognate organisations examining issues of risk and sustainability from different perspectives.
iii) Representatives of outside organisations with a vested interest in the use of the outputs from the commission.

Domenico Giardini (IASPEI and ILP) Institut fur Geophysik, ETH-Honggerberg, CH-8093, Zurich, Switzerland, Tel. 41 1 633 2605 or 633 11 11, Fax. 41 1 633 10 65, e-mail giardini@seismo.ifg.ethz.ch
Viacheslav Gusiakov (Tsunami Commission) Tsunami Laboratory, Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics, Pr. Lavrentieva 6, Novosibirsk 630090, Russia, Tel. 7 3832 34-20-70, Fax. 7 3832 32-42-59, e-mail gvk@omzg.sscc.ru
Grant Heiken (IAVCEI) Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, MS F665, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA, Tel. 1 505 667 8477, Fax 1 505 665 3687, e-mail heiken@lanl.gov
Roland List (IAMAS) Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A7, Canada, Tel. 1 416 978 2982, Fax 1 416 978 8905, e-mail iamas@atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca
Fernando Sanso (IAG) Politecnico di Milano, DIIAR-Sezione di Rilevmento, Piazza L. da Vinci, 1-20133 Milano, Italy Tel. 39-02-2399-6504, Fax 39-022399-6530, e-mail fsanso@ipmtf4.topo.polimi.it
(IAG has indicated that a new representative will be appointed)
Uri Shamir (IUGG Bureau) Faculty of Civil Engineering, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel, Tel. 972 4 822 4246, Fax. 972 4 829 2239, e-mail shamir@tx.technion.ac.il
Kuniyoshi Takeuchi (IAHS), Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Yamanishi University, JP-KOFU 400-8511, Japan, Tel. 81-552 20 8603, Fax 81 552 53 4915, e-mail takeuchi@mail.yamanashi.ac.jp
Tom Beer (IAPSO), CSIRO Environmental Risk Network, Private Bag 1, Aspendale, Vic. 3195, Australia Tel +61 3 9239 4546, Fax + 613 9239 4444, e-mail: Tom.Beer@dar.csiro.au
Alik Ismail-Zadeh (CMG) International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Math Geophysics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Warshavskoye sh. 79-2, Moscow 113556, RUSSIA Tel: +7-095-1190613 Fax: +7-095-3107032, e-mail: aismail@mitp.ru

During 2001:
Geophysikalisches Institut, Universitaet Karlsruhe, Hertzstr. 16, Geb. 6.42, 76187 Karlsruhe, Germany. Tel: 49-721-6084621, Fax: 49-721-71173, e-mail:
Alik.Ismail-Zadeh@gpi.uni-karlsruhe.de

Alternate IUGG Members:

Greg Valentine (IAVCEI), Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, MS F665, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA, Tel. 1 505 665 0259, Fax 1 505 665 3687, e-mail gav@lanl.gov

A.W. Jayawardena (IAHS), Dept. Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Tel: +852 2859 1966, Fax: +852 2559 5337, e-mail: hrecjaw@hkucc.hku.hk

Chen Yong (IASPEI) State Seismological Bureau, No. 63, Fuxing Avenue, Beijing 100036, Beijing, PRC. e-mail: yongchen@public.bta.net.cn

Susan McLean (IAGA) National Geophysical Data Center, WDC SEG, 325 Broadway, Boulder CO 80303, USA, Tel: 1 (303) 497 6478 Fax: 1 (303) 497 6513 e-mail: smclean@ngdc.noaa.gov

Gordon Rostocker (IAGA) Physics Department, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA, T6G 2J1 Tel: 1 403 492 1061, Fax 1 403 492 4256 e-mail: rostoker@space.ualberta.ca

Evgueni Kontar (IAPSO) P.P. Shirsov Institute of Oceanology, 36 Nakhimovskiy Prospekt, Moscow, 117851, Russia Tel ++7 (095) 129 2181 Fax ++7 (095) 956 2448 e-mail: kontar@cityline.ru

V. G. Kossobokov, (IASPEI)
International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Warshavskoye sh., 79, k.2, Moscow 113556 Russia, Phone: +7 095 110 7795, Fax: +7 095 310 7032
email: volodya@mitp.ru

Robin Brett (President, IUGS) US Geological Survey, 917 National Center, Reston, VA 20192, USA, tel. 1 703 648 6164, Fax 1 703 648 6164, e-mail rbrett@usgs.gov
Wally Johnson, Geohazards & Geomagnetism Division, Australian Geological Survey Organization (AGSO), GPO Box 378, Canberra, ACT 2601 Australia, Tel. 61 2 6249 9377 Fax 61 2 6249 9986, e-mail Wally.Johnson@agso.gov.au
John Schneider, (Australian Cities Project), Australian Geological Survey Organization (AGSO), GPO Box 378, Canberra, ACT 2601 Australia, Tel. +61 2 6249 9111 Fax +61 2 6249 9999 John.Schneider@agso.gov.au
Dave Jackson (US Nat. Committee, IUGG) Dept of Earth and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1567, USA, Tel. 1 310 825 2779, Fax 1 310 825 2779 e-mail djackson@ucla.edu
Scott Spaulding, (US National Academy of Science/National Research Council), 2101 Constitution Ave., Washington, DC 20418, e-mail Sspauldi@nas.edu
Richard C. ROCKWELL, Executive Director, The Roper Center & Institute for Social Inquiry, Professor of Sociology, University of Connecticut, 341 Mansfield Road, U-164, Storrs, CT 06269-1164 USA. Tel: +1 860 486-4440 Fax: +1 860 486-6308 e-mail: Richard.Rockwell@uconn.edu