Volume 4, Number 1, March, 1996 - Noise News International

elated to noise. These organizations are not coveredin this article. There are two organizations of theU.S. Government which deal with various aspectsof noise and its control, but have no regulatoryauthority. The Federal Interagency Committee onAircraft Noise (FICAN) holds one meeting a yearwith 30-40 attendees representing agencies of theU.S. Government. The purpose of the committee isto exchange information; it has no policy-makingrole. The Transportation Research Board of the NationalResearch Council has Committee AIF04 onTransportation-Related Noise and Vibration. Thiscommittee normally meets twice a year. This committeenormally meets twice a year, in conjunctionwith the TRB annual meeting in January, duringwhich two or three special sessions on noise andvibration are presented, and in the summer when thecommittee meets by itself and organizes a symposiumon a specialized topic.National OrganizationsOutside the USA, individuals interested in acousticsand noise control have felt the need to band togetherto promote common interests. In Noise/News International,thirteen Member Society Profiles havebeen published since 1993 March:• The Acoustical Society of America (1994 September)• The AcousticalSocietyof Finland(1995December)• The Acoustical Society of Japan (1994 March)• The AcousticalSocietyof Norway(1995September)• The AustralianAcousticalSociety(1993September)• The Belgian Acoustical Society (1993 June)• The BrazilianAcousticalSociety (1994December)• The Canadian AcousticalAssociation(1996March)• The French Acoustical Society (1993 March)• The Institute of Noise Control Engineering ofJapan (1994 June)• The Institute of Noise Control Engineering of theUSA (1995 June)• The New Zealand Acoustical Society (1995March)• The Swedish Acoustical Society (1995 March)All of these organizations were formed to satisfynational needs, and many publish and distributetechnical publications and newsletters to their members.They form a subset of the Member Societies ofInternational INCE listed at the front of this issue ofNoise/News International.For those readers who have access to the Internet,these Member Society Profiles can be accessedthrough the INCEfUSAhomepage which has a URLofhttp://users.ao1.com/inceusa/ince.htmlFrom this page, on can access the NNI Directorywhich is also published in each issue of NNI. In thedirectory on the Internet, there are links from thename of the Member Society to the profile.Regional AssociationsThe Western Pacific CommissionforAcoustics wasestablished in 1988 by representatives of the acousticalsocieties located in the Western Pacific region.The principal task of the Commission is to organizeregional conferences covering all fields of acoustics.The most recent was the Fifth Western Pacific RegionalAcoustics Conference (WESTPRAC) whichwas held in Seoul, Korea in 1994 August. Previousconferences were held in Singapore (1982), HongKong (1985), Shanghai (1988), and Brisbane(1991). The next conference is scheduled for 1997in Hong Kong. The Commission does not issue aregional publication because many of the nationalsocieties that are members of the Commission alreadyhave their own periodicals.The Federation of Acoustical Societies ofEurope (FASE) was founded in 1972. By the end ofthe decade of the 1980s, some 24 European acousticalsocieties had affiliated themselves with FASE.The organization has never had a technical publication,but has concentrated on organizing congresses,symposia and specialized conferences. The firstcongress held in Paris in 1975 had 490 participants.Since then, none of the FASE conferences has attractedmore than 200 participants. It is widely anticipatedthat the activities of FASE will be phasedout and replaced by those of the new organizationformed in Europe.At a meeting in Paris in 1992 September, representativesof eleven European acoustical societiesdecided to establish the European Acoustics Association(EAA) whose aim is to promote acoustics inEurope and in the world. At present, EAA has 20national acoustical societies on its roll - 13 as fullmembers and 7 as associate members. EAA publishesajournal,Acta Acustica, which has justcompletedits third year of publication. EAA holds its firstcongress, Forum Acusticum, in 1996 April in Antwerp,Belgium.International OrganizationsThe International Commission on Acoustics (ICA)is one of the twenty commissions on disciplinesrelated to physics within the International Union ofPure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). Established in1951, the ICA is the principal international organizationwhich represents acoustics and all of its subfieldsfor scientists and engineers. Professor TorKihlman is the current chairman of the commission.The mission of the ICA is to promote interna-16NoiselNews International1996 March