Grid computing provides the backbone for a distributed virtual laboratory for experimentation and simulation in earthquake engineering.

In just two short years, the power of grid computing will dramatically alter the way forward-thinking earthquake engineers go about their daily work. The researcher who once lacked access to expensive equipment will use a desktop server to participate in reaction wall experiments taking place halfway across the country. The tsunami specialist previously hampered by data incompatibility will compare results with output from completed numerical simulations.

Through a grid environment that brings them together and puts applications, scientific instruments, and data at their fingertips, engineers and researchers will work more effectively toward the central goal of earthquake engineering: reducing the loss of life and property from seismic activity. NCSA, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Michigan, the University of Southern California, Argonne National Laboratory, and the University of Oklahoma are leading the effort to deploy the integrated network that will connect these engineers and researchers.

Called NEESgrid, the systems integrations effort connects a growing list of geographically distributed members of the NSF-funded George E. Brown, Jr., Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), a distributed virtual laboratory for earthquake experimentation and simulation. NEESgrid will provide the backbone for the NEES collaborative environment. This Internet-based infrastructure will supply a variety of services and applications. NEESgrid will deliver to researchers across the nation a network of shared equipment sites housing shake tables, centrifuge test facilities, reaction walls, and tsunami wave tanks. The network will also provide a curated data repository of physical and numerical earthquake simulations, maintained at NCSA, and provide access to numerical simulation resources. Distributed servers developed at Argonne, called NEES points of presence (NEESpop's) located at equipment sites will coordinate grid resources and data flow between users and the grid.

"The NEESgrid will revolutionize the way earthquake engineers approach the solution of complex problems," explains Dan Reed, director of NCSA and the Alliance. "Researchers at one site will be able to access and manipulate experimental facilities at another site, combine the measurements with models, and collaborate with yet a third site. By allowing virtual teams to collaborate across time and space, and by integrating multidisciplinary computational models, distributed measurement and test facilities, and real-time data streams, NEESgrid will enable attacks on problems beyond the scope and resources of any one research group. Indeed, precisely such capabilities are needed to respond to both natural disasters and threats to homeland security."

Access Online | Posted 8-27-2002