What are the World Expo

World Expo are international exhibitions hosted every five years from a different country in the world. Their aim is to promote industrial and technological progress world–wide, showing the last scientific and technological innovations that are somehow able to contribute to the creation of better conditions of economic and social global life. The main organism that arranges the frequency and the organisation of exposition is the B.I.E., Bureau International des Expositions, born 22 November 1928 in Paris by a convenction subscribed by several nations of the world. Today B.I.E has 154 states and organisms as members. In the Convenction – that is regularly updated – organization criteria and rules are specified that every expo must adopt, as well as the relationships among the member states, and it also points goals that want to obtain.

In the convenction of 1928, that came into force in 1931, there is a list of the main characteristics that an universal expo must have. Since 1931 the B.I.E. protocol has distinguished two types of Expo but the terms of this classification underwent some changes in the time and three phases in the history of Expo Classification are recognized.

The first phase 1931–1980 distinguished: General Expo, that had a duration of until one year with a break of six years (first class) and four years (second class); and Specialised Expo that had a duration of until six months.

In the second phase instead, that dates back between 1980 and 1996, there was a distinction between World International Exposition (Universal Expo) that took place every ten years and had a duration of six months, and International Specialised Exposition, that took place every two years and had a duration of six months.

The third phase, then, that began in 1996 with the protocol of 1988, whose laws are still in force. It provides the following classification:

– Registered International Exposition, known as World Expo is the most important type of Exposition (as the Expo 2015 in Milan) organized every five years with a minimum duration of six months with no limits on space respect to the extention of the expositive path.

– Recognized International Exposition, organized in the break between two World Expo, having a specific subject and with a maximum duration of three months.