KAREN will make it possible for earthquake engineers at the University of Auckland to take an active role in earthquake simulation and research being conducted by the USA-based George E Brown Jr Network of Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES).

The objective of NEES is to lessen the impact of earthquakes by providing new capabilities for earthquake engineering research. One by-product of NEES is the transformation of the earthquake engineering research scene from isolated experiments where resources are often replicated and results are not shared, to an environment of collaborative studies with test data stored permanently on a public data repository.

NEES has 15 state-of-the-art earthquake engineering experimental equipment sites, including large scale shake tables, mobile shakers, centrifuges, tsunami wave basins, strong walls and geotechnical testing equipment.

These sites are connected using a cyber-infrastructure called the NEESgrid, which has high-tech tele-presence technology and software for remote meetings, experiment viewing and hybrid experimental simulation.

NZ-NEES Capability Build Fund project

The NZ-NEES group received funding in the first round of project applications to the REANNZ Capability Build Fund. Co-funding was also gained from the Earthquake Commission.

Their project will see the development of a distributed hybrid testing experiment where a computer model located in Auckland is used to remotely control a physical experiment located in the laboratory in Oxford University in real time.

Using distributed testing, separate components from a complex structure will be synchronously tested at UK universities Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge and at Auckland University, with the data from each experiment transferred in real time to a UK or NZ host that uses computational modelling to describe the response of the entire structure.

These sophisticated hybrid experiments utilising physical resources from the three UK universities and Auckland University are planned for mid 2008.

The group has established a virtual research space using Sakai (a virtual research environment) to allow collaboration, communication and sharing of experimental data with researchers at the University of Canterbury.

The NZ-NEES group involves professors, lecturers, IT specialists, lab technicians and students from the University of Auckland.

Not possible without KAREN

Researchers at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the University of Auckland have long been observers of NEES but before KAREN they lacked the bandwidth to actively participate.

They could watch international experiments, but only through one or two camera feeds. KAREN gives the engineers in Auckland the ability to watch experiments through multiple views while communicating in real time with researchers conducting the experiments. Their earthquake engineering group now participates in regular videoconference meetings with the UK Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (UK NEES group).

Global recognition

“The big aim of earthquake engineering is to minimise costs due to earthquakes and to reduce the number of lives lost and injuries. If we can use this facility to help us with research in this area, it will help us to build better and safer buildings,” says Quincy Ma, Lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and project leader.

“For earthquake engineers to be able to design good buildings we need to have good data to work from and for successful projects you have to have collaboration between institutions.

“The word is getting around that New Zealand is a potential partner for collaborative research in earthquake engineering. KAREN has put the New Zealand earthquake engineering fraternity ever more visible on the world map.

“Opportunities now exist to conduct research in ways previously not possible. Incredibly exciting times are to come as NZ-NEES awaits the results of months of capability building and as new researchers come on board.”

More information

http://www.nznees.auckland.ac.nz/
http://sakaiproject.org/

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Updated 16 May 2008