Mission

The Japan-Korea-Taiwan Joint Seminar on Earthquake Engineering for Building Structures, also known as SEEBUS, has been held each year since 1999. The purpose of this Joint Seminar is to bring together researchers and experts from Taiwan, Korea and Japan to discuss the most recent developments on earthquake engineering for building structures. The seminar is held once a year in Taiwan, Korea and Japan by turn, in order to have efficient and timely discussions among the delegates from all three countries.

Origin

In 1998 when the second International Symposium on Architectural Interchange in Asia "Asian Architecture in the 21st Century" was held in Kobe, Japan, Prof. Dong-Guen Lee (Sungkyunkwan University, Korea) and Prof. Fumio Watanabe (Kyoto University, Japan) reached the agreement that a joint seminar on earthquake engineering for building structures should be organized for the mutual exchange of information and the research promotion among young researchers in both countries. At that time they also hoped the future participation from other countries in Asia. However they did not intend to make this a big meeting like WCEE because the purpose is fruitful discussion within limited number of participants.

In 2000 when the second SEEBUS was held in Kyoto, two distinguished keynote speakers, Prof. Keh-Chyuan Tsai (National Taiwan University) and Prof. Shyh-Jiann Hwang (National Taiwan University of Science and Technology) were invited and they agreed that Taiwanese researchers should join the SEEBUS seminars and to host the third seminar in 2001. In these early SEEBUS seminars, the delegates from all three countries have reached the following agreements, which later become the traditions of SEEBUS seminars.

Traditions

• Purpose of this seminar is to exchange the information and research promotion among young researchers in Taiwan, Korea and Japan.
• Definition of young researcher: a person who has young motivation in earthquake engineering regardless of actual age.
• The seminar will be held once a year in Taiwan, in Korea and in Japan by turns.
• Total number of participants shall be limited less than 30 to have a fruitful discussion during the seminar; 10 from Taiwan side, 10 from Korean side and 10 from Japanese side.
• For the continuation of the seminar, some of participants (6 or 7) from each country shall be fixed.
  Participants excepting fixed members will be requested to join the seminar by the coordinators based on the topics to be taken at the seminar.
• Visitors must bear the expenses for oversee transportation and hotel accommodations. These expenses shall be prepared by visitors’ country.
• The seminar will be held at the university classroom or other similar places to save money. Seminar proceedings will be published from the host country.
• The seminar will be two-day program including paper presentation, discussion on research, settlement of topics of next seminar, and technical tour prepared by host country.