2006-09-05 section meeting: minutes

Minutes

Meeting Chaired by Vladan Babovic (Section Chairman)

Minutes by: Shie-Yui Liong (Section Secretary)

Time: 18:00 – 19:15

1. Minutes of the previous meeting held in Seoul, Korea were unanimously accepted
2. With the growth and international acceptance of Hydroinformatics by number of professional associations, it became obvious that the existing section by-laws need to be revised. This particularly to align IAHR, IWA and IAHS requirements. Working group composed of Dragan Savic, Roger Falconer, and Peter Goodwin was formed to develop new by-laws. These will then be prepared and offered for discussion during 32nd  IAHR conference (2007) in Venice, Italy.
3. Impression of 7th International Conference on Hydroinformatics (Nice, France; 4 – 8 September 2006):
• Number of participants: about 500.
• Arthur Mynett (The Netherland) praised Philippe Gourbesvielle and organizing committee for bringing scientists, practitioners and politicians to meet and discuss Water Directives; He also praised the Singapore conference organizer, Integrated Meetings Specialist Pte Ltd, for the excellent smooth running of the conference.
• Asaad Shamseldin (New Zealand) noted very few participants from developing countries and suggested to create a fund to support their participation in the future.
• Erik Pashe (Germany) was very pleased with discussion session provided in certain sessions (e.g. Water Directives).  He encouraged its practice in the future conferences.
• Dragan Savic (UK) encouraged more interactions with participants; noted that there are too many parallel sessions; and suggested to place some not-too-matured papers on poster sessions.
• David Fortune (UK) suggested the presentation should be limited to 5 minutes followed by discussions.
• Barbara Minsker (USA) noted that only few participants came from USA and suspected perhaps due to the start of the new semester. Christopher George (IAHR) explained time constraints from other IAHR related conferences.
• Jean Cunge (France) suggested to participants who do not wish to bring home the voluminous HIC2006 proceedings to pass the proceedings to the Euro Aquae students.
• Dimitri Solomatine (The Netherlands) congratulated Philippe Gourbesville for the success of the Conference; noted the need to conduct workshops/tutorials in the future conferences; and suggested to have more specialized topic sessions.
• A lady participant (Indian Subcontinent?) suggested to give financial support to students in future conferences; and she was also concerned with high conference registration fee.
4. XXXII IAHR in Italy (July 2007):
• Hydroinformatics is one of the sessions;
• Paper submission deadline is December 2006;
5. Advances in Hydroinformatics Workshop will be held in McMaster University; (Canada) from 4 – 7 June 2007.  Paulin Coulibaly (Canada) gave a short introduction of the site and venue; briefly mentioned about the structure of the workshop (state-of-the-art hydroinformatics; and in-depth discussion).  Outcome of the workshop will be published as a Monograph on Advance in Hydroinformatics.  NATO funding is being sought after;
6. 8th International Conference on Hydroinformatics (Chile, January 2009):  Oscar Parra (Chile) gave a brief introduction of Chile, Conception, and the venue.  Hydroinformatics 2009 will be a joint conference with 7th International Symposium on Ecohydraulics;
7. XXXIII IAHR Conference will be held in Vancouver, Canada, from 9 – 14 August 2009;
8. The contenders to host the 9th International Conference on Hydroinformatics were present.  They are:
• Jianhua TAO (China; location: Beijing);
• James Ball (Australia; location: Cairns); and
• Manuel Gomez   (Spain; location: Barcelona).
9. Links with ICHE conferences (the following ICHE event is scheduled for Sept 2006, Pennsylvania, USA).  Arthur Mynett (The Netherland) will attend ICHE 2006 and discuss with the committee as to how to cross-link with their future plans.
10. Journal of Hydroinformatics:
• (1) the status of citation index, ISI (will be commenced in Spring 2007; seven years are required to get ISI for any journal);
• (2) a healthy situation regarding the number of papers (16 papers to be printed; 29 papers being reviewed) and suggested the possibility of starting bi-monthly issues instead of quarterly issues.
• Kala Vairavamoorthy (UNESCO-IHE) is in process of organizing special issue on Hydroinformatics in developing countries.
• Avi Ostfeld and Dimitri Solomatine (The Netherlands) are in the process of organizing special issue on Watershed management and data drivem techniques.
11. Any Other Business:
• The committee thanked Hamish Harvey for creating Hydroinformatics Section website
• Participants were informed of Hydroinformatics Sessions in many international conferences (e.g. AGU, EGU, IAHR-APD, AOGS)
• UNESCO-IHE:  The search for a Hydroinformatics Professor at UNESCO-IHE was mentioned.

Attendance