During the last annual conference of SRA-Europe (Ljubljana, 11-13 September 2006) an initiative was launched to harmonize the terminology used in the different fields of risk analysis (industrial, environmental, perception, communication, etc.). The present situation is often confusing and inconsistent (think, for example, about the meanings of risk “assessment/analysis”, about the meaning of “vulnerability”, and so on).

To this end, a working group has been established, composed of both individuals and institutions from different fields of research. The remit of the group is to develop agreement around definitions and thus to derive a general glossary.

In conjunction with the Executive Committee of SRA-Europe, the participation of the Presidents of SRA-International and of SRA-Japan enables this work to be carried out on an international scale.

All those who are interested in joining with us in this task are kindly asked to contact the SRA-E secretariat at the below address:

Raffaella Cozza, e-mail: cozza@stru.polimi.it

The current Charter of SRA-E was last revised in 1998. Since that time the membership has increased, our relationship with SRA itself has evolved and the field of risk analysis is of course continually developing. Drawing on the experience of this time and in order to best fit ourselves to meet future challenges, the Executive Committee of SRA wish to recommend a revision of the SRA-E Charter. Our intention in doing this is to enable the organisation of SRA-E activities to fulfil the objectives of the Society and meet the needs of members more effectively. The main motivation of the changes is to increase continuity and stability in the management of the Society. 

We would value your comments on the revised Charter which can be found here. The opportunity for comment will also be given to members at the General Assembly during the annual conference in Ljubljana (10-13 September). Following this, and any subsequent revisions, members will be formally asked to approve the Revised Charter later this autumn. We anticipate that this process will be carried out electronically. Further information will be provided in due course.

You may find it useful when looking at the Charter to be aware of the areas that have been revised. A short introduction for the main changes are thus given below:

• Paragraph 1.3: Classes of membership
Here we propose to add under 1.3. e) a new category “special membership’ of SRA-E”. The aim of this is to develop a better Europe specific service for our members. We would value any thoughts you have about what sort of membership benefits could be developed here that would be useful to you.

• Paragraph 3.1: composition of the Executive Committee.
Here we propose to reduce the number of members in the Executive Committee from 9 to 8. We value the commitment and hard work of all members of the Executive Committee – however as recruitment is often difficult we intend to streamline the composition of the Committee in this way.

• Paragraph 3.6 and 3.7 with regard to the election and term of office for Executive Committee members
Here we propose to prolong the duration of office term for the members of the Executive Committee to establish more continuity on the Committee, to establish a more long-term perspective and so to improve the effectiveness of the Committee. We propose particular changes that affect the term of President-elect, President, Past- president, Secretary and Treasurer. We propose that the duration of these offices are changed from 1 to 2 years.

• Paragraph 6.1: Representation at the SRA Council.
The proposed changes here are based on the Memorandum of Understanding with the Society for Risk Analysis International which is currently under review.

We invite you to consider the revised Charter and to send your remarks and comments by the end of September to Olivier Salvi, the current President of SRA-E (Olivier.Salvi@ineris.fr).

• Download Revised Charter in Word File (99 Kb DOC)
• Download Revised Charter in PDF File (50 Kb PDF)

Elections for the SRA-E Executive Committee were closed on 3rd July 2006. For this 2006 ballot, six candidates stood for election for three vacant positions.

The votes were counted by Julie Barnett (SRA-E Executive Committee) and Olivier Salvi (President).

The vote count yielded the following figures:

24 voters submitted valid ballot sheets; no ballot sheet was voided.

The distribution of valid votes is as follows:

• Ann Enander 14
• Branko Kontic 12
• Alberto Alemanno 11
• Myriam Merad 11
• Markus Grutsch 9
• Tomas Oberg 7

We thank all candidates for their participation in this election and the members who took the time to vote. We sincerely hope that the candidate not elected this year will consider standing for election in a future ballot.

Because an unexpected vacancy occurred on the Executive Committee when Marianne Abramovici (Chair of the SRA-E Executive Nominations) resigned her position, we decided to welcome four new members instead of three.

We are therefore pleased to welcome Ann Enander, Branko Kontic, Alberto Alemanno and Myriam Merad to their new three-year positions on the Executive Committee.

The 15th annual meeting of SRA-E took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Abstracts and presentations can be dowloaded at: http://sra-e-2006.ijs.si/Sessions_and_Contributions.htm

Full details are available at http://sra-e-2006.ijs.si

The 16th SRA Europe Meeting will take place in The Hague, the Netherlands, on 17 - 19 June 2007.

Jan Gutteling has agreed to be local organiser of the conference.

Topic: Building Bridges: Issues for future risk research

Full details are available at www.sraeurope2007.eu