Breaking New Ground in Seismic Safety

Newly Incorporated NEES Consortium WIll Lead Decade-Long Virtual Collaboration on Earchquake Engineering Research

April 2003

The development of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) took a major step forward with the January 2003 incorporation of NEES Consortium, Inc., the non-profit entity that will manage and lead a revolutionary, decade-long program of virtual collaboration on earthquake engineering research. The NSF-funded NEES initiative ushers in a new style of cooperative research in the engineering world, encompassing advanced equipment sites at 15 universities networked through a high-performance Internet.

The NEES Consortium's Interim Board of Directors at its first meeting, January 31, 2003, in Portland, Oregon. Efforts to develop the Consortium were guided by the motto, "If it sounds different, it's because it hasn't been done before."

Scheduled to become fully operational in September 2004, NEES will function as a so-called collaboratory, making it possible for experimental researchers in multiple locations to collaborate on the same project. An even broader network of researchers, educators, and practitioners will be able to monitor and contribute to experimentation and simulation activities ("teleparticipate") and tap into a curated data repository, as if everyone were located in the same laboratory.

NEES aims to produce a fundamental shift in the emphasis of earthquake engineering research from the current reliance on physical testing to an approach that integrates experimentation, simulation, and computer modeling. It will provide a fertile environment for researchers to develop increasingly complex, comprehensive, and accurate models of how structures respond to earthquakes. This knowledge can be used to improve the seismic design and performance of U.S. buildings and infrastructure, and it holds potential for application to other natural and manmade hazards, such as hurricanes and bombings.

NSF is supporting all aspects of the NEES effort, including consortium development, funding of new or enhanced experimental facilities to be used in the NEES collaboratory, and creation of an advanced information technology infrastructure linking researchers and experimental facilities around the United States. Funding for acquiring major research equipment and constructing laboratory facilities and data infrastructure totals $82 million.

The newly established NEES Consortium, Inc. will directly manage operations and maintenance funds for NEES equipment sites as well as system integration via a high-performance Internet network known as NEESgrid. Led by the Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREE), the NEES consortium development process began in October 2001 and achieved its objective of incorporation eight months ahead of schedule. Marking the occasion, Esin Gulari, head of the NSF Engineering Directorate commented, "We congratulate the earthquake engineering community for its energy and enthusiasm in building the NEES facilities and network. The incorporation of the consortium is a major milestone in this effort."

The NEES consortium development process featured a series of 21 regional workshops held in 2002 to review plans with the earthquake engineering research community and obtain their input and approval. The first annual meeting of the members of the NEES Consortium is scheduled to take place May 21-22, 2003 in Park City, Utah and will feature the installation of a newly elected Board of Directors drawn from the community.

In addition to its role in overseeing shared usage of equipment sites and system-wide information technology services, the NEES Consortium will lead education and outreach efforts and manage a library of experimental and simulation data that will become a long-term legacy of the program.

For more information, contact Bob Reitherman, Executive Director of CUREE, at reitherman@curee.org, (510) 231-9557.