This project will support the travel of US young researchers and students to participate in the International Workshop on Bio-inspired Methods and Large Scale Structural Monitoring to be held in Tokyo, Japan on July 11-12, 2010. The monitoring of large civil infrastructure systems such as bridges, building, pipelines, etc. requires large sensing network and extensive sensor data processing. The biological systems are now known to employ highly sophisticate sensors and data processing to maintain their operation almost effortlessly and thus much can be learned from these systems to manage and monitor large civil structures. The focus of the workshop is to identify the high priority emerging research topics that can be pursued to develop bio-inspired monitoring systems for large scale civil infrastructure systems. It will also identify the collaborative research topics and mechanism that can be pursued by researchers to leverage the resources of different countries. The workshop will facilitate the exchange of ideas, research data, facilities, and resources among the international researchers to address the pressing research issues of common interest in structural health monitoring. The program includes a strong participation of young researchers and graduate students.
During the 5th World Conference on Structural Control and Health Monitoring, several attendees gathered to participate in a supplemental workshop, titled the International Workshop of Bio-Inspired Methods and Large Scale Monitoring. The workshop was intended to be an intellectual exercise, focusing on large-scale structural health monitoring and bio-sensing /bio-actuation. By gathering the leading researchers in the relevant fields together under a shared agenda, the state-of-the-art for each field was assessed and a clearer picture of the future needs for research in these areas was developed. In addition, participation in this workshop led to international student exchange and encouraged new collaborations between US and international researchers, due to the involvement of several members of the international seismic community. The workshop produced several notable results, stemming from presentation/discussion sessions which were held during the workshop. In the first session, the future needs of bio-sensing and bio-actuation were addressed. Issues facing current researchers, including working with others in outside fields and the complexity of the systems being used for analysis, were discussed at length and several resolutions were agreed upon. The second session focused on the future needs of large-scale structural health monitoring. After discussion, the group reached a consensus on the major challenges and the ultimate goals of SHM, including laying a path for future research progression. The third session centered on enabling technologies and available resources. The discussion focused on the current capacity of sensors and areas of future development, funding, data management and strategies for overcoming these issues in future research endeavors. The fourth and final session focused on overall grand challenge problems on which the community needs to concentrate. Three specific goals were agreed upon by the assembled community, which emphasized technology development for new applications in sensing/control and increased international collaboration for research. Ultimately, as a result of this workshop, the attendees agreed upon several action items for the international research community that, going forward, will lead to advances in these two research areas.
