STRUCTURAL DIVISION, ASCE Report on Activities FY94 Report on Plans FY95 Committee on: Emerging Computing Technology of the Technical Administrative Committee on Analysis and Computation Submitted by Hani G. Melhem, Acing Chair Date: March 15, 1994 ************************************************************* I. Administration A. Membership (number of committee members) 15 B. Meetings 1. Meetings held during FY93 (date, location) - April 17, 1993, Irvine California - June 8, 1993, Anaheim, California 2. Meetings planned for FY94, 95 (date location) - April 26, 1994, Atlanta, Georgia - June 20, 1994, Washington, D.C. - April 3-5, 1995, Boston, Massachusetts - June 5-7, 1995, Atlanta, Georgia C. Subcommittee and Task Committees (reporting to this committee): None II. Papers in FY93 (3/93 - 3/94) Journal of Structural Engineering A. Number of papers reviewed for Journal ___(No record is kept of this activity) B. Number of Papers published in Journal ___(No record is kept of this activity) III. Publications (Special Publications, Manuals, other) A. Publications completed during FY93 (10/93 - 3/94) (title, where and when published) ___ B. Publications in preparation (title, expected completion date) - Special Issue of the Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering on "Neural Networks in Engineering" The special issue was completed on schedule and is due for publication in April 1994. We had a grand total of 18 papers submitted, 10 were eventually accepted and 8 were declined or declined and encouraged to resubmit. Most members of the ECT participated as reviewers, and Garrett was the guest editor for the special issue. The special issue consisted of 8 separate contributions. The two papers that were accepted and not included in the special issue will appear in a later issue of the Journal of Computing in CE. C. Publications planned for the future (topic, expected starting date) - ASCE Monograph on Neural Networks in Civil Engineering Development of the monograph is proceeding quite well. The outline has been created, a call for papers for various parts of the monograph has been issued, responses have been received, reviewed and accepted or rejected, and the authors are currently developing the monograph chapters. The chapters are due back in June and will be reviewed like journal articles. It is expected that the monograph will be prepared for submission to the ASCE by the end of 1994. The co-editors of this monograph are: Nabil Kartam (U. Maryland), Ian Flood (U. Maryland), and Jim Garrett. The first two editors are representing the ASCE/TCCP-AI and Expert Systems Committee and Jim Garrett is representing the ASCE/SD-ECT Committee. IV. Technical Sessions (ASCE Annual Convention, Structures Congresses, Specialty Conferences, other meetings) A. Sessions held during FY93 (10/93 - 3/94) (title, where and when held) - Technical Session in the Computing Conference 1993 (June 7- 9, Anaheim, California) entitled Qualitative Reasoning in Civil Engineering, chaired by Kim Roddis, co-sponsored by this ECT committee and TCCP/Expert System Committee B. Sessions Planned for FY94 &95 (title, where and when to be held) - Technical Session in Structures Congress XII, 1994, "Emerging Computing Technology - Research and Practice," Jointly chaired by F. Cheng and J. Garrett has been organized and will occur on April 25, 1994. - A session in the 1995 Structures Congress (April 3-5, 1995, Boston MA.) on Logic Programming for Structural Engineering is being organized by Sivand Lakmavaheri of Auburn University, Stuart Chen of the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Kim Roddis of the University of Kansas. The objectives of this session, which support the mission of the ECT Subcommittee are: 1) to give an engineering-oriented view of logic programming technology, 2) to demystify concepts and terms of logic programming 3) to provide an overview of recent advances in logic programming 4) to present several relevant engineering applications of logic programming - A session in the 1995 Structures Congress (April 3-5, 1995, Boston MA.) entitled Fuzzy Logic Applications in Structural Engineering has being organized by Hani Melhem (Kansas State University). The session is accepted as a poster session. However, excellent abstracts have been received and a request to elevate the session into a regular technical session has been filed. C. Sessions Planned for the future (topic, tentative date, and location) - Sessions and workshops are being planned for both the 1995 and 1996 TCCP computer congress as well as the 1996 structures congress. - Contributions to the 12th Conference on Analysis and Computation are being studied and will be discussed in the forthcoming committee meetings of April and June 1994 V. Other activities (type of activities, action completed or planned) A. Completed during FY93 (10/93 - 3/94) B. Sessions for FY94 & 95 *- Technical Session in Computing Congress 1994 (June 20-23, Washington D.C.) on Multimedia, by Nelson Baker *- Technical Session in Computing Congress 1994 (June 20-23, Washington D.C.) on Standard Processing, by Jim Garrett. - Technical Session in Computing Congress 1994 (June 20-23, Washington D.C.) entitled "Applications of Fuzzy Sets in Civil Engineering," chaired by Hani Melhem, co-sponsored by this ECT committee and TCCP/Expert System Committee - Technical session "Delivering Knowledge-Based Expert Systems in Civil Engineering: Moving from Research to Practice" will take place at ASCE Computing Congress 94. This session is jointly sponsored by ECT and TCCP AI&ES and is organized by Kim Roddis. C. Planned for the future (including meetings requested for 10/95 - 9/16 with date and location) - Meetings are planned for April 3-5, 1995, in Boston, Massachusetts, and for June 5-7, 1995, in Atlanta, Georgia - An ASCE monograph on Logic Programming is planned for the year 1997. - Video tapes for ASCE distribution and marketing (tutorial type) are being considered on the topic of Logic programming and would be developed during the year 1996. - Multimedia products are being considered by the committee for educational purposes (ASCE continuing education department). Nelson Baker would take the lead in this activity in the later part of 1995.. VI. Plans for the Future (goals, areas of opportunity, etc.) The main objectives of this subcommittee of the Analysis and Computation TAC of the ASCE Structures Division are to: 1. bring to the attention of the structural engineering community emerging (or possibly existing) computing technology (including hardware and software technologies) that may be applicable to some part of the structural engineering process and is not currently being employed; and 2. transfer to that community some degree of understanding of these technologies so that the community begins to experiment with these computing technologies. The following is our proposed plan of activity for the next few years. The names of people expressing interest in taking the lead on these activities is also listed next to the topics. These topics include: 1) Neural Networks (Garrett, Ghaboussi) 2) Multimedia (Baker, Sause) 3) Logic Programming (Lakmazehari, Roddis, Chen) 4) Fuzzy logic (Melhem) 5) Distributed Computing 6) Virtual Reality 7) Genetic Algorithms 8) Advanced Communication 9) Information Management 10) Concurrent Engineering 11) Standards Representation VII. List activities that have been delayed or tabled due to lack of funding. Many activities would have been further carried out if full committee standing was granted to the ECT subcommittee. Committee activity has been so far on a voluntary basis which puts much burden on the individual members and control group. VIII. Other activities - Workshop in 1994 Structures Congress on Neural Network The Neural Network workshop proposed for the 1994 Structures Congress is scheduled to take place, registration permitting. Dr. Jamshid Ghaboussi will conduct this workshop (additional volunteers would help with some of the lectures). Jim Garrett will not be involved in this workshop as originally planned. - Workshop in 1994 Structures Congress on C++ and Fortran 90. The object oriented language C++ and Fortran 90 will be covered . New standards that better support data structuring and vector and parallel processing will be presented. Target audience is structure engineers who have experience with high-level programming language. Session is organized by John Baugh, Jr. (North carolina State U.), Margaret Neggs (The Premisys Corporation) , and George Turkiyyah (U. of Washington). - Workshop in 1995 Structures Congress on Logic Programming for Structures Engineering Proposed by ECT committee members Sivand Lakmavaheri of Auburn University, Stuart Chen of the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Kim Roddis of the University of Kansas - International joint activity with the European community Ian Smith, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is a member of a newly formed European Group for Structural Engineering Applications of AI (20-30 persons). This group stemmed for the somewhat fragmented situation in Europe in AI research and development. Smith and J. Garrett are keeping contacts through e-mail and other means for possible joint activity between this group and the ECT. Research needs will result in activity that would be considered first of its kind and as non-drafting applications in the European community. Issues pertaining to codes and standards (the Eurocode), standards processing for the 1994 computing congress, and the results of a 15/20-year of French research could be investigated.