Reference Data Models for Supporting the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (nees)

NEES (the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation) is a national, networked resource for next-generation experimental earthquake engineering research and education in the United States. The goal of NEES is to support open access to and use of NEES’s facilities and data by the earthquake engineering community. The system infrastructure to support the NEES activities is the NEESgrid which is intended as a distributed virtual “collaboratory” cyber-infrastructure for earthquake experimentation and simulation. This paper describes an effort in developing reference data models for NEESgrid shake table experiments and large scale structural testing. Data models provide the “semantic” information describing the project and experimental data. Brief description of the data models and some of their features are presented in this paper. The proposed reference data models are shown to be flexible and extendible. Validation and usability of the reference data models have demonstrated that the data models are sufficiently comprehensive to save and organize the experimental data from typical earthquake engineering simulations.