PROGRAM

1st IASME/WSEAS International Conference on

GEOLOGY and SEISMOLOGY
(GES'07)

Portoroz, Slovenia, May 15-17, 2007

Tuesday, May 15 2007

PLENARY LECTURE 1

Legal Regulation of the European Internal Market in Energy

Ms. Tina Krope

LL. M. (Master of Laws, University College London)

Ministry of Economy

Directorate for Foreign Economic Relations

Slovenia

Abstract: The process of liberalising the energy and gas market in Europe is something the EU has struggled with for the past 15 years. To establish an internal market in the EU electricity and gas sectors was a priority in the Single Market programme and Lisbon Agenda in March 2000 in improving European competitiveness. It is a stated aim of the European Commission, Member States, regulatory authorities, and others, to work towards the creation of a single, efficient and effectively competitive energy market.

There are a number of reasons that underpin the launching of single European energy market. The integration of markets is expected to lower the energy prices and generate several advantages, such as increased security of supply, the latter being a great concern of all the EU countries, because the European economy is steadily demanding more and more energy, essentially based on fossil fuels, which make up four-fifths of its total energy consumption, almost two-thirds of which it imports. In 30 years’ time, 90% of oil is likely to be imported; consequently, rising import ratios may lead to the risk of an interruption or difficulties in supply. The high oil and gas prices we faced recently have raised major questions regarding scarcity of these resources. The recognition that these resources are finite and that the current high prices are, on the other hand, not as relevant considering the fact that there are sufficient reserves for the next few decades. There are other relevant factors affecting the price such as the increased import dependency of import consuming countries. Secure and affordable supplies can no longer be taken for granted, as the global energy demand is increasing and the oil and gas reserves are declining. On one hand, it is argued that security of supply is an ongoing concern; nevertheless, an integrated and competitive internal energy market will more than likely deliver secure supply, via a larger and more flexible market, and competition-inspired efficiency gains, innovation and development. To deliver the common objectives of the EU - secure, sustainable and competitive energy - an approach based solely on 25 individual energy policies is not sufficient. After all, experiences from gas and electricity liberalisation, wherever it has taken place around the world, have always been positive, and are expected to be such in the EU as well.

The opening up of the markets to all non-domestic consumers from July 2004 and to all consumers in July 2007 requires a series of measures to be put in place to enable new operators, the drivers of competition, to enter the market and serve the very many new eligible customers. We will have to deal with a completely different scale of things, one of the crucial changes being the increased number of eligible customers from July 2007 onwards.

The aim of achieving a fully liberalised and integrated energy market with lower energy prices and improved security of supply is for the benefit of the consumers, and at the same time, potential investors in new projects require a stable regulatory framework and the assurance that they have equal access to all customers in the EU. Besides the transposition and implementation of the new Gas and Electricity Directives into national legislation of the 25 Member States, the task of ensuring compliance should not fall exclusively on Commission’s shoulders. In order for the consumers to have a de facto single European grid, the work of national regulatory authorities is of a great importance, and the work conducted through the European Regulators Group for Electricity and Gas (ERGEG); the benefits for the consumers and the rights enjoyed by the European citizens are formed through a constructive dialogue with public authorities within the context of good governance.

PLENARY LECTURE 2

Meteorological Climate Change effect of the Ataturk Dam
in Turkey at Eastern Anatolia

 

Prof. Levent Yilmaz

Civil Engineering Department

Technical University of Istanbul

Maslak, 80626, Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract: In Turkey, the significant amount of energy produced obtained of hydroelectrical power stations. Water constructions such as dam’s reservoir in arid and semi-arid regions effects each other with climate and hydrology of environment. Therefore meteorological conditions have to be established and monitored at the hydroelectrical power stations. Droughts are among the most significant natural hazards that might damage human life and property under different meteorological and environmental conditions. The simplest methodology of temporal climate change assessment is the standardized precipitation index (SPI) which is used to quantify the precipitation deficit for several time scales, for example time averaging periods. The SPI is commonly used for the identification of various climate change characteristics such as the rain duration change, magnitude change, and intensity change at different standard truncation levels. The relationships between the drought duration and magnitude are provided in the form of scatter diagrams with the best straight-line fits. These are obtained for different truncation levels. Precipitation based drought description has been extended to triple-variable additionally including temperature and humidity time series. Such contours can be prepared for any base precipitation value but in this study average precipitation value is adopted as the truncation level. In this study is related to construction of the most important main project in the South-eastern Anatolia Project (GAP) area, the Ataturk Dam.

PLENARY LECTURE 3

SMA Structures Computations

 

Prof. M. L. Boubakar

Laboratoire de Mecanique Appliquee Raymond Chaleat,

Institut FEMTO-ST, UMR-CNRS 6174

Universite de Franche-Comte, ENSMM, UTBM

24, rue de l’Epitaphe, 25000 Besancon

FRANCE

Abstract: The growing interest in smart structures technologies has led in the last decades to the formulation of a variety of constitutive models for shape memory alloys (SMA). However, most of these models are so demanding from a computational standpoint that, except some exceptions, their application has been limited to only one-dimensional situations.

In this work attention is focused on a phenomenological model of isotropic pseudoelasticity emanating from that, and on its numerical integration. The constitutive model under consideration is formulated in the framework of internal variables theory of inelastic behaviours, namely, by defining the transition criteria determining the onset of phase transitions (SMA pseudoelasticity is a reversible behaviour associated with a stress-induced solid-solid phase transition from a parent phase called austenite to a product phase called martensite) in a way completely analogous to the loading functions of plasticity theory. Although consistent with classical rate-independent behaviour modelling, this approach requires, however, suitable modifications of numerical algorithms originally designed for elastoplasticity. Return mapping algorithms are discussed in detail hereafter. In order to perform finite strains analysis, a closed form of the proposed modelling for small strains is developed within the context a non-material rotating frame formulation. In this context, a constitutive frame is suggested to take non-proportional loading into account.

PLENARY LECTURE 4

Will we ever tackle the Problem of Environmental Pollution?

 

Prof. Aart Sterkenburg

Laboratory for Ecological Risk Assessment

National Institute for Public Health and the Environment RIVM

P.O Box 1, 3720 BA Bilthoven, The Netherlands

Abstract: In the past decennia, the state of the Dutch environment has improved considerably, mainly due to the acknowledgement by policy, in the seventies and the eighties, that action had to be taken with respect to the worsening state of the air, soil, and surface and ground water, and due to the subsequent regulations enforced in later years. The latter came both from the national government and international agreements. Many emissions of substances have diminished, especially of those originating from sources that could be pointed to unambiguously as being responsible for environmental pollution. Obvious examples are the switch to unleaded petrol in order to prevent the release of toxic lead into the air, the ban on the use of haloalkanes in the Montreal protocol in order to protect the ozone layer, but also the direct measures, within the scope of REACH, that Industry must take to prevent emissions.

Yet, worrying amounts of pollutants still enter the environment. In densely populated areas the problem of particulate matter in the air is extremely difficult to tackle, just as is the continuing pollution of the surface water by release of chemicals from sediments or the leaching of substances form the soil into the ground water. In most cases these processes can be traced back to the diffuse sources as registered in the E-PRTR database.

Nowadays it has become a challenge to consider ecology with sustainable economic growth. What price are we prepared to pay for an environment that is clean and that will remain clean in the future? This talk will focus on the problems that are caused by the continuing release of substances into the environment after the enforcement, and the relative successes, of the first most obvious and most cost-effective measures.

SPECIAL SESSION: Site-Dependent Deterministic and Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis

Chair: Vladimir Sokolov

Wednesday, May 16 2007

SESSION: Modelling and Simulation in Geology and Seismology

Chair: Stelios Zimeras, Chen Hong-Kai

SESSION: Characteristics and Solutions on Earthquakes in Populated Areas

Chair: Chen Hong-Kai, Vladimir Sokolov