Only two weeks left till the New Year, and now is the time to reflect year
2008. Again this year many disastrous earthquakes occurred in many parts of
the world including the Sichuan Earthquake in China. Let's do our best to
reduce earthquake damages next year. Please find the attached group photo
(available on PDF version) that shows you all the IISEE staff members.
Dr. Mukai, research engineer, joined us after Dr. Tamura passed away.
Research support staff and secretaries joining IISEE in this year are as follows;
Mr. Mizutani, Ms. Nishizawa and Ms. Satou.
We sincerely appreciate your continuing support for IISEE.
We wish the New Year will be the happiest and best for you.

Nobuo HURUKAWA & all IISEE staff members

7-th General Assembly of Asian Seismological Commission (ASC) was held from
Nov. 24 to 28, 2008, at Tsukuba International Congress Center together with
2008 Fall Meeting of Seismological Society of Japan (SSJ) by the
collaboration of ASC and SSJ.
About 820 researchers from about 40 countries and a region have participated
in these conferences and about 720 presentations were performed.
About 40 ex-participants of IISEE's training courses were found among them.
IISEE has contributed ASC2008 holding a pre-symposium training course from
Nov. 23 to Nov. 24, 2008 and performing an exhibition of booth. IISEE alumni
meeting was held also during the conference period.

Toshiaki YOKOI
Chief Research Scientist, IISEE

A short training course on "Microtremor Array Exploration Technique" was
held in Nov.23-24, 2008, preceding to 7-th General Assembly of Asian
Seismological Commission (Nov. 25-27, 2008) by the cooperation of
Seismological Society of Japan (SSJ) and International Institute of
Seismology and Earthquake Engineering (IISEE), Building Research Institute,
Japan. Especially, SSJ provide them a full financial support for travel,
stay and registration fees. Thirteen participants from Armenia, Bhutan,
Egypt, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Nepal, Palestine,
Uzbekistan and Yemen have learned about Spatial Autocorrelation Method that
is becoming popular today in the society of Earthquake Engineering for
microzonation and site-specific studies.
Eight of them are ex-participants of IISEE's training courses.
Besides of the presentation materials for lectures, IISEE provided them a
free UNIX emulator on Windows (Cygwin), Fortran programs for the SPAC
analyses and the sample data sets.
IISEE will hold similar short training courses not only in Tsukuba but also
on Internet meeting services.

Toshiaki YOKOI
Chief Research Scientist, IISEE

The IISEE Alumni Meeting was held in the evening of the 26th of the last
month during the 7th General Assembly of Asian Seismological Commission
(ASC) and Seismological Society of Japan, 2008 Fall meeting in Tsukuba, Japan.
21 ex-participants, 8 IISEE training lecturers, and 7 IISEE staff members
participated in this alumni meeting. First, Dr. Harsh Gupta gave a speech.
Then, in the middle of the meeting, each attendee introduced him (or
her) self, respectively.
All of the attendees enjoyed this meeting. The next ASC General Assembly is
going to be held in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2010.
Let us see each other in Hanoi in 2010.

Tatsuhiko HARA
Chief Research Scientist, IISEE