HISTORY OF THE SOCIETY

A meeting of delegates of the April 1989 Conference on Environmetrics in Cairo, Egypt, was called to discuss the formation of an environmetrics society.  At that meeting the decision to form a society was made and the name, The International Environmetrics Society (TIES), was chosen. A.H. El-Shaarawi was elected President and I.B. MacNeill, Vice-President, and they were given the mandate to choose other members of an interim Board of Directors and to prepare a draft of a constitution for the new society. P.M. Berthouex (U.S.A.), S.R. Esterby (Canada), J.S. Hunter (U.S.A.), W.O. Pipes (U.S.A.), W.A. Rieger (Australia) and R. Viertl (Austria) accepted the invitation of the President to join the Board of Directors.  A draft constitution, prepared by the Board under the coordination of S.R. Esterby, was accepted in principle at a meeting of delegates of the 1990 Conference on Environmetrics in Tremezzo, Italy.  This document provided TIES with the set of objectives given above and formed the basis for the By-Law of TIES.  The application by the Board, coordinated by A.H. El-Shaarawi and S.R. Esterby, for incorporation of TIES as a nonprofit corporation was accepted by Consumer and Corporate Affairs Canada May 11, 1993.

These objectives are being met through the organization of Environmetrics conferences, the adoption of Environmetrics as the official journal of TIES, the inception of an organized membership, and a 1993 membership directory.  The publication of a newsletter commenced in December 1994. Environmetrics, with Editor-in-Chief A.H. El-Shaarawi and Deputy Editors D.R. Brillinger, P.C. Chatwin and Bernard Fingleton, is in its 12th year of publication in 2001.   Environmetrics has aims and scope compatible and synchronously formulated with those of TIES.

The Environmetrics conferences have been attended by individuals from many countries and many disciplines.  They have been highly successful in providing a formal means of exchanging ideas and, perhaps more importantly, in providing an atmosphere conductive to informal discussion.  The location, dates and chairs of the past and scheduled conferences are as follows:

• Cairo, Egypt April 4-7,1989 A.H. El-Shaarawi and I.B. MacNeill
• Tremezzo, Italy Sept. 27-30,1990 A.H. El-Shaarawi and I.B. MacNeill
• Madison, USA October 7-10,1991 A.H. El-Shaarawi and P.M. Berthouex
• Espoo, Finland August 17-21,1992 A.H. El-Shaarawi and J. Walden
• Burlington, Canada Aug. 12-15,1994 A.H. El-Shaarawi and S.R.Esterby
• Bangi, Malaysia Dec. 6-9,1995 A.H. El-Shaarawi and M. Abdullah
• Sao Paulo, Brazil July 22-26,1996 A.H. El-Shaarawi and C. Pereira
• Innsbruck, Austria August 4-8, 1997 A.H. El-Shaarawi and R. Viertl
• Gold Coast, Australia July 3-6, 1998 A.H. El-Shaarawi and R. Correll
• Athens, Greece August 23-27, 1999 H. Pavlopoulos and A.H. El-Shaarawi
• Sheffield, UK September 4-8, 2000 P.C. Chatwin and C. W. Anderson
• Portland, Oregon, USA August 13-17, 2001 A.R. Olsen
• Genova, Italy June 18-22, 2002 V. Dovì, D.Cocchi, S.R. Esterby