Earthquakes and tsunamis have the potential within the United States to cause significant casualties and damage to buildings, bridges, critical utility lifelines, and other civil infrastructure. To reduce this risk, the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) originated as a national, multi-user research infrastructure to enable research and innovation in earthquake and tsunami loss reduction, create an educated workforce in hazard mitigation, and conduct broader outreach and lifelong learning activities.
Purdue University, through this cooperative agreement, will lead, manage, operate, and maintain NEES from FY 2010 to FY 2014. NEES consists of (1) a managing headquarters located at Purdue University, (2) fourteen, state of the art earthquake engineering and tsunami experimental facilities located at and locally operated by universities across the United States, (3) the NEEShub cyberinfrastructure framework, and (4) powered by NEEShub, the NEES Academy for education, outreach, and informal science education. Information about NEES is available at www.nees.org.
The NEES facilities, located at Cornell University; Lehigh University; Oregon State University; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; University at Buffalo, The State University of New York; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Davis; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, San Diego; University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; University of Nevada, Reno; and University of Texas at Austin, include single (outdoor), dual, and triple shake tables; geotechnical centrifuges with in-flight biaxial shakers and robotic tools; a tsunami wave basin; laboratories for testing large-scale structures, soil-foundation-structure interaction systems, and lifeline systems; mobile geotechnical and structural testing field equipment; and two permanently instrumented field sites in southern California. Other organizations participating in NEES operations include Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; San Jose State University; University of Florida, Gainesville; University of Kansas, Lawrence; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and University of Washington, Seattle.
For intellectual merit, NEES provides the earthquake and tsunami hazard mitigation communities with a research infrastructure to make discoveries, translate discoveries to engineering demonstrations, develop innovative technologies, and transition technology advances to industry, engineering practice, and seismic design provisions. The experimental facilities and a user-requirement driven cyberinfrastructure powered by NEEShub provide an open access, collaborative, and data-rich experimental and analytical infrastructure for research, education, and technology transfer across earthquake engineering and related fields. NEEShub, which is based on HUBzero technology previously developed at Purdue University, seamlessly integrates the fourteen facilities and their telepresence capabilities, a publicly accessible curated data repository, web-based collaborative tools, access to leading edge compute resources, and open source computational tools. Using Internet2, the NEES cyberinfrastructure will enable hybrid testing methods (coupled computational and physical simulations) as well as multi-site hybrid simulation.
Broader impacts are realized through open access to the NEES infrastructure for research and education. Technical staff operating the experimental facilities and cyberinfrastructure powered by NEEShub offer training workshops to help researchers, educators, and students discover and use NEES resources. NEEShub's user-friendly, web-based tools facilitate access to NEES resources; contribution of research findings, experimental data, educational materials, and computational and visualization tools; and the reuse of NEES experimental data for follow-on research. NEES provides for the integration of research findings and activities with education, outreach, and training, thus enabling the smooth transition of ideas from conception to education to practice. NEES has the potential to become the global resource for earthquake engineering simulation and education, serving not only researchers in countries advanced in seismic design and construction, but also as a 24/7 resource for researchers in countries with less developed civil infrastructure and seismic provisions. The NEES Academy provides a community resource for educational materials, on-line learning, and outreach across the age spectrum. The NEES Academy supports outreach to the profession, providing a mechanism to bridge theories to practice and the needs of practice to research priorities. Faculty and staff at the NEES facilities support ongoing local outreach efforts, such as K-12 camps, museum exhibits, and informal science education.
This award is part of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), www.nehrp.gov.
