Meeting Minutes of the

Committee on Emerging Computing Technologies

May 30th, 2003

2003 Structures Congress & Exposition

The Westin Seattle, Seattle, Washington, USA

Committee members in attendance:

· Asghar Bhatti, (University of Iowa)

· Chris Foley, (Marquette University)

· Abhinav Gupta, (North Carolina State University)

· Eduardo De Santiago,  Vice-Chair  (Illinois Institute of Technology)

· Elisa D. Sotelino, Past-Chair (Purdue University)

· Colby Swan,  Chair  (University of Iowa)

Visitors in attendance:

• Bill Bulleit, (Michigan Technical University)
• Shahram Pezeshk, (University of Memphis)

1. CALL TO ORDER

The meeting was called to order at 8:10 am by Colby Swan who chaired the meeting.  All members and guests in attendance were introduced.

2. MINUTES OF PRECEDING MEETING

Minutes from the preceding ECT Committee meeting (April 5th 2002, Denver) were approved by those in attendance. 

3. Review of the Committee’s Charge

The charge of the committee and the duties/responsibilities of members were read to those in attendance by the chair.  The standing charge of the ECT Committee is as follows:

To provide a mechanism by which various emerging computing technologies that may be applicable to some part of the structural engineering process can be identified and brought to the attention of the structural engineering community.  These technologies include parallel and distributed computing, databases and information systems, web-based and collaboration technologies, artificial intelligence, field-based computing, and automation.

4. Review of Committee Membership.

The committee membership roster was reviewed and the following actions were recommended, all of which become effective 1 October 2003:

· Graham Archer, member since 2001 continues as a member through 2004;

· Asghar Bhatti member since 2002 continues as a member through 2005;

· Abhinav Gupta joins the committee with a 3-year term through 2006;

· Paul de Paoli, member since 1999 is given a 1-year extension through 2004;

· Eduardo De Santiago, member since 1999 receives a 1-year extension;

· Sukomal Modak, member since 2000 receives a 1-year extension through 2004;

· Jun (James) Peng joins the committee with a 3-year term through 2006;

· Hugues Rivard, member since 1999 is retired from the committee;

· Ian Smith, member since 2001 continues as a member through 2004;

· Elisa Sotelino, member since 1997 receives a 1-year extension due to her position as ECT’s representative on the editorial board of the Journal of Structural Engineering;

· Bozidar Stojadinovic, member since 1999 receives a 1-year extension;

· Colby Swan, member since 1997 receives a 1-year extension;

· Zongmu Wang, member since 2002 continues through 2005;

· Xiping Wu, member since 2000 is retired from the committee.

It is noted that members ordinarily receive a three-year term which can be extended to six years on a year-by-year basis at the discretion of the chair and other members following the third year.  Members of the Committee’s Control Group can be extended beyond six-years with the approval of the chair of the controlling Technical Advisory Committee (TAC).

5. Control Group Membership

· New member Abhinav Gupta was tentatively appointed as secretary of the Committee;

· Eduardo De Santiago is the committee’s vice-chair through 2005;

· Colby Swan is the committee’s chair through 2005;

· Elisa Sotelino (past-chair) is the committee’s Associated Editor for the Journal of Structural Engineering. 

6. CURRENT ACTIVITIES

• Technical Sessions at the 2003 Structures Congress:

ECT sponsored one technical session entitled “Computer Simulation of Structural Applications” at the 2003 Structures Congress.  The session, having five presentations, was organized and moderated by Elisa Sotelino.

• At the plenary session for the congress, it was announced that the ECT committee is scheduled to hold a workshop entitled “Information Technology for the Practicing Civil Engineer” at the 2004 Structures Congress in Nashville.  This workshop would build on a very successful session sponsored by the committee on a similar topic held at the 2002 Structures Congress in Denver.  However, since the committee had not realized that their proposed workshop has been approved, this announcement took them somewhat by surprise.  Before organizing this workshop in earnest for 2004, the chair will confirm that the workshop has indeed been approved for 2004.  The ECT committee will organize this workshop beginning the summer 2003 by e-mail communications and tele-conferencing.

• One of the activities that committee members are expected to engage in is peer review of technical articles submitted to the Journal of Structural Engineering for possible publication.   Elisa Sotelino is ECT’s Associate Editor for the Journal of Structural Engineering and responsible for finding and assigning reviewers for papers related to interest areas for the ECT Committee.  Concern was expressed by Elisa about the lack of JSE manuscripts coming to her related to computer applications.  One likely reason for this is the overlap of ECT’s areas of interest in computer applications with other Analysis & Computations technical committees, such as:  Optimal Structural Design; Structural Control; and Methods of Analysis.   

After discussing this at some length, the committee was in agreement that the list of key words used to direct papers to ECT’s Associate Editor should be augmented.  The additional key words that were agreed upon are: hybrid simulation; distributed computing; algorithm development; high performance computing; genetic algorithms; evolutionary algorithms; real-time simulation; sensor technology; and system identification.

7. New Activities

· Sessions for 2005 Structures Congress in New York, NY:

· Hybrid Simulations (Elisa Sotelino and Abhinav Gupta);

· High Performance Computing in Civil Engineering (Eduardo De Santiago);

· Artificial Life Algorithms (Bill Bulleit and Chris Foley)

To avoid confusion, proposals for all of the above sessions [Session title; four identified speakers; presentation titles and abstracts if available] should be submitted directly to Colby Swan next October so that he can submit them on behalf of this committee.

· Review articles:

Rather than the ECT Committee authoring special monographs as a committee activity, the possibility of members of the committee teaming up to author review articles for the JSE on topics related to ECT were discussed.  Members and friends present agreed to give this a try.  In particular, the following specific review papers were discussed and agreed upon:

· “Evolutionary Algorithms in Structural Engineering” with Asghar Bhatti agreeing to write an abstract to be circulated to the committee for further input and identification of co-authors.

· “High Performance Computing in Structural Engineering” with Colby Swan agreeing to write the abstract and identify co-authors.

8. ADJOURNMENT

Before adjourning, action items were identified as follows:

1. Colby Swan will determine if ECT’s IT Workshop will be held in 2004, or 2005;

2. Elisa Sotelino will interact with JSE’s Editorial Board to augment ECT’s keywords, so that more papers come to the committee for review.

3. Session developers [Sotelino, Gupta, De Santiago, Bulleit, Foley] for 2005 Congress are to develop complete proposals and submit them to Colby Swan by October 2003.

4. Asghar Bhatti and Colby Swan will develop abstracts for review papers and circulate them to committee members to identify potential co-authors.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:20 am.

Minutes prepared by:  Eduardo De Santiago, Secretary 

Assistant Professor 

Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering 

Illinois Institute of Technology 

Chicago, IL 60616 

(312) 567-5714 

(312) 567-3519 (fax) 

desantiago@iit.edu