4TH EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON UNDERWATER ACOUSTICS. VOL I

Prefazione - Indice

Prefazione

The European Conference on Underwater Acoustics is by now a well established tradition sponsored by the European Commission and the European Acoustics Association. The first conference was held, in Luxembourg, in 1992, followed by the second one in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1994, the third one at Heraklion, Greece, in 1996. The present two volumes collect papers presented at the Fourth European Conference on Underwater Acoustics, held September 21-25, 1998, in Rome, Italy, and organized by the Istituto di Acustica "O.M. Corbino" of the Italian National Research Council and by the University of Rome "La Sapienza".
This conference occurs in coincidence with the International Year of the Oceano. Life on earth is more and more vitally dependent on the oceano Climate and ecology are sensitive to even small changes in, the condition of the oceans. The importance of the sea as a source of food will increase as world population increases. So, a basic condition for efficient management and safeguard of the marine environment is the ability to measure and record the status of key parameters of the oceano From this point of view, the acoustic wave is the most important means for the study and exploitation of the marine environment, due to its ability to travel over long distances in the water. Sound can be considered the indispensable tool for underwater applications in remote control, observation and telemetry. Some methods used in underwater acoustics are reminiscent of the acoustic systems employed by marine animals - such as whales and dolphins - to navigate and get good "acoustical images" in undersea environment, in arder to detect and locale underwater targets. Among the instruments so far produced, sonar systems are typical examples of devices whose further advances could have a decisive turn once man had perfectly discovered the secrets of the dolphin's "biosonar".

The field of Underwater Acoustics is very wide and stimulates useful interchanges across different disciplines. It involves more and more international participation of a large number of scientists from different areas of the world, as demonstrated in this conference by the presence of participants from some 23 countries, whose Tesearches span on oceanography and coastal zone science as well as on marine technology and bioacoustics. Over 180 papers have been selected by the Scientific Committee according to the following thirteen different topics: Signal and data processing, Bubble acoustics, Calibration, Acoustics in marine environment, Acoustics in fisheries, Acoustics in marine geology and geophysics, Imaging, Acoustic measurements, Ambient noise, Acoustic tomography, Sound propagation modelling, Scattering and reverberation, and Transducers and instrumentation.
The presentations include invited lectures, contributed papers and posters. Among invited lectures, two keynote papers are distinguished and presented in the plenary sessions by Prof. M.J.Buckingham and Prof. T.H. Neighbors, dealing with seismic wave propagation in rocks and marine sediments, and sea surface reverberation scale modelling, respectively.

The organization of this conference would have be impossible without the joint efforts of many people. A debt of gratitude is owed to many individuals and organizations for helping to make the conference a successo First, of course, thanks must go to the authors and their research groups who contributed such high quality papers, and to the Members of the Scientific Committee who reviewed the abstracts, offered good advice and availability in all aspects of the scientific activity.
The efficient contribution of the Organizing Committee that assisted in the different activities of the conference organization is highly acknowledged. Special thanks go to Luca Pitolli for his skilled and continuous assistance, all through the last two years, in almost every aspect of this conference.
Finally, much thanks must go to Gilles Ollier of the European Commission's MAST Programme and to his predecessor Marco Weydert who was the initiator and untiring supporter of this series of conferences.


Giovanni B. Cannelli
Istituto di Acustica "O.M. Corbino", CNR



Rome, August 15, 1998