Enabling group communication is one of the major challenges for the future Internet. Various issues ranging from services and applications to protocols and infrastructure have to be addressed. Moreover, they need to be studied from various angles and therefore involve skills in multiple areas. COST264wascreatedtocontributetothisinternationale?orttowardsgroup communication and related technologies. The European COST framework is ideal for establishing a new community of interest, providing an open forum for ideas, and also supporting young researchers in the ?eld. The COST264 action, o?cially started in late 1998, aims at leveraging the European research in this areaandcreatingintensiveinteractionattheinternationallevel.Tothispurpose, COST264 decided to organize an annual technical workshop, the "International Workshop on Networked Group Communication." NGC'99 in Pisa is the ?rst event of the series. Despitethisbeingthe?rstworkshopanddespitetheveryshorttimebetween the Call for Papers and the deadline for submissions, and the other con?icting andmoreestablishedevents, theCallforPapersofNGC'99washighlysuccessful: we received 49 papers, of which 18 were selected to compose the basis of the technical program. We hope you will enjoy our paper selection, which is the VI Preface core of these proceedings, and addresses important issues in the research and development of networked group communication. In addition to refereed contributions, we scheduled two keynote speakers (Christophe Diot and Steve Deering), and four invited talks by Ken Birman (Cornell), Bob Briscoe (BT), Radia Perlman (SUN), Tony Speakman (CISCO).

The increasing concern for the continuous release into the environment of emerging contaminants from diffuse and point sources (such as urban wastewater treatment plants), arouses high interest in technical and scientific community. The characterization of pollution sources and contamination pathways, natural degradation in surface water, disinfection by-products (NDMA) formation in drinking water, emerging contaminants removal by wastewater treatment processes (biological processes, advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), and solar driven AOPs) to control their release into the environment as well as to make wastewater reuse safer, are all issues specifically addressed in this book by internationally recognised experts from research and academic institutions. This book can be an useful tool for investigators and practitioners to approach the problem of the control of emerging contaminants spreading into the environment.

Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) have gained attention rapidly worldwide since they have been proven to be effective in the removal of wide spectrum of organic and inorganic contaminants from water and soil. However, the issues related to the formation of oxidation intermediates which may be more toxic than parent compounds as well as the operating costs are the main obstacles to a wider spread at full scale. This volume is addressed to researchers and professionals with a background in environmental science and engineering. The objective is to provide them with knowledge about AOPs related applications such as fundamentals and technology, analytical characterization of emerging contaminants and oxidation by products, ecotoxicity and biodegradability tests, urban and industrial wastewater treatment, sludge treatment and reduction, soil treatment, solar driven AOPs.