Committee on Emerging Computing Technology
Analysis and Computation TAC
ASCE Structural Division
Minutes of Meeting, June 20, 1994
First Congress on Computing in Civil Engineering
Renaissance Hotel, Washinton, D.C.
June 20, 1994
Attendance: 16
Name Affiliation
Baker, Nelson - Georgia Institute of Technology
Baugh, John - North Carolina State University
Caldwell, Shannon - North Carolina State University
Chen, Stuart - State University of New York at Buffalo
ElKordy, Mohammed - NY State DOT
Garrett, Jim - Carnegie-Mellon University
Karlheinz Lehner - University of Bochum, Germany
Kumar, Bimal - Stratchclyde University, Glassow (UK)
Lakmazaheri, Sivand - Auburn University
Law, Kincho - Stanford University
Melhem, Hani - Kansas State University
Neggers, Meg - The Premisys Corporation
Sauce, Richard - Lehigh University
Smith, Ian - Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne,
(Switzerland)
Turkiyyah, George - University of Washington
Yoon, C. John - Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, NY
1. Welcome to new visitors and introduction of attendees
The meeting was called to order about 9:10 PM by Jim Garrett.
During the introduction, the attendees signed an attendance sheet.
Guest were welcome, especially representatives from the European
Group on Artificial Intelligence. Garrett distributed the agenda
for the meeting (xerox copy attached to these minutes) and the
agenda was approved. Item (c), Other business, was added for
discussion under agenda item 4 (Review of old business)
2. Acceptance of minutes from last meetings
Richard Sauce, who acted as stand-in recording secretary during the
April 26, 1994 meeting in Atlanta, distributed the minutes of that
meeting. These minutes as well as those of the June 8, 1993
meeting at Anaheim were reviewed and approved. It was noted that
the adjournment time for the April meeting had not been exactly
recorded but it was estimated to be around 6:30 p.m. (An electronic
version of the Atlanta meeting was posted by Sauce on the e-mail
bulletin board, Monday June 27, 1994).
3. Discussion of new full committee status
The elevation of our committee to full committee standing was
officially announced. Actually, that was announced earlier by
Melhem's e-mail of May 23, 1994 on the network. This was
anticipated since Franklin Cheng has been commending our
committee's level of activity. Nevertheless, the good news were
received with great pleasure. We need to maintain this level of
activity and be even more selective in the type and quality of our
future activity.
Garrett suggested that his position of committee chair and the
present control group can remain the same for a period of two-years
after which the positions would be opened for re-election. The
suggestion was called to motion and the motion was approved
unanimously.
4. Review of old business
4.a. Special issue of JCCE on Neural Networks
The special issue of the ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil
Engineering appeared in April 1994 (Volume 8, Number 2). Garrett
was the leading editor of this issue. Garrett expressed his
appreciation to those who helped in the papers review and to the
cooperation of the different committee members, which made this
issue possible. William Rasdorf, editor-in-chief of the Journal,
was pleased with the issue and many positive comments were received
concerning this activity. Another special issue may be desirable
in the future and a similar activity of our committee is
encouraged.
4.b. ECT session at 1994 SC in Atlanta
John Baugh gave a briefing of the ECT session at the 1994
Structures Congress last April (Session M1A1: Emerging Computing
technology - Research & Practice). The attendance at the session
was more than forty persons. Papers included presentations from
Professors Fenves, Ghaboussi, Baker, and Elkordy. In general, the
session was a success.
4.c. Other Business
A discussion was opened on the lack of success of our proposed
tutorial "C++ and Fortran 90," (8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., instructors:
Baugh, Neggers, and Turkiyyah, $250), that was offered as a
continuing education seminar prior to the 1994 Congress Sunday,
April 24. Several reasons were possible for the failure of the
tutorial. One could be that the fees were too high. Another may
be that all tutorials should be half-day rather than a full day.
Also all day Sunday may not be a best time.
According to a recent letter from Franklin Cheng, future tutorial
sessions (as opposed to continuing education seminars) are now
encouraged. The decisions for the acceptance of these sessions
will be made by the Structures Congress Steering Committee, and not
by ASCE's continuing education division as it used to be in the
past.
Martin Ramirez had previously suggested over the e-mail bulletin
board (May 23, 1994) tutorial sessions on "Neural nets theory and
applications" or "High performance computing: massively parallel
processing and distributed computing". Other possible tutorials
could be on Fortran 90/High performance Fortran. More discussion
is given below under Item 6.
A suggestion was made that we should put out a survey at the 1995
Structures Congress next year to ask the Congress attendees to
specify ideas for tutorials, and this way come up with topics of
interest to the expected audience. Lakmazaheri will take the
initiative for this activity. A call will be made to form a list
of topics (15 to 20) with comments to include in the survey.
5. Discussion of Current Business
5.a. Sessions planned for 1995 Structures Congress
Presently our committee has two technical sessions finalized for
the Boston Structures Congress '95. The first is on Logic
Programming (Roddis, Lakmazaheri, and Chen, chairs) and the second
on Fuzzy Logic (Melhem and Ross, chairs).
At this time in the meeting, Garrett presented the request of two
persons who previously asked to join our committee. These persons
were Ian Smith and C. John Yoon (attending). The resume of the
candidates were circulated and they were asked to leave the room
for a moment to discuss the applications. A motion was proposed to
accept both candidates, and the motion was approved after voting.
Melhem will process both applications and forward them to ASCE.
5.b. Sessions at the 1994 TCCP Congress
Our committee was involved in three technical sessions at this year
computing congress: (1) Recent Advances in Representations,
Processing Strategies, and Authoring Environments for Codes,
Regulations, and Standards (07M2, Garrett organizer), (2)
Technology Transfer - Moving from Research to Practice (07W2,
Roddis organizer), Applications of Fuzzy Sets in Civil Engineering
(07W4, Melhem organizer). As of the time of the meeting, only the
first session had taken place and attendance was adequate. Ian
Smith will report on the attendance at Roddis's session, for the
records.
5.c. Monograph on Neural Network
This ASCE Monograph is basically an activity of the TCCP committee
on Expert Systems and AI. Ian Flood and Nabil Kartam, from the
University of Maryland, are the editors of the monograph. It will
be delivered by Dec. 1994. About 25 chapters were submitted and 11
have been selected. None of our committee members participated in
papers. However, Elkordy contributed by reviewing the papers
related to structures.
It was felt that it would be appropriate to send a summary of the
review process of the Special Issue to Frank Cheng. Garrett will
send him a brief report on that.
6. New Business
6.a. Sessions/Tutorials for 96 Structures Congress (SC)
Neggers initiated contacts with William Baker, Chair of the 1996 SC
organizing committee. Although the dead line for submitting
proposal and abstracts for technical/tutorial sessions is June 15,
he will be accepting proposals from us until Monday (June 27th.).
Neggers agreed to be our contact person for delivering the session
abstracts/requests. She would need them by Friday (June 24th), or
at most Monday (the 27th) to send them out on time. Some proposals
suggested during the last April meeting were discussed. These are
listed below along with the persons who proposed them:
ECT in Practice - Mohammed Elkordy
Life Cycle Structural Models - Meg Neggers
Computer Technologies for Life-long Learning - Nelson Baker
Computational Support for Intelligent Structures - Stuart Chen
Demystifying the Alphabet Soup of ECT - John Baugh (Possible
tutorial)
Follow-up should be by e-mail or fax to Neggers. Tutorials may be
best as in-track sessions of 90-minute duration. Baugh and Garrett
can take the lead for this. Other possible topics would be:
Neural Networks - Jim Garrett,
Visualization - George Turkiyyah,
Distributed Computing - John Baugh and Kincho Law
Sensor Data Processing - Stu Chen
Other possible tutorial topics are:
Object Oriented Programming (1/2 day) - Meg Neggers
Fortran (George Turkiyyah)
6.b. New emerging computing techniques to focus on
Neggers suggested that a glossary/inventory be made for new topics
and possible future activities as related to new emerging computing
techniques. This idea goes along the line with the survey that
Lakmazaheri is taking the lead for. Maybe these two efforts can be
coordinated together.
6.c. Plans for interaction with EG-SEA-AI
Ian Smith and Bilal Kumar commented on the activity of the newly-
formed European Group for Structural Engineering Applications of
Artificial Intelligence (EG-SEA-AI). Presently the group has about
80 members all from the structural engineering discipline. These
members represent 60 different technical and professional groups
from 15 different countries. Forthcoming activities are in
conjunction with the IABSE Colloquium, Bergamo - 1995, Italy, and
a Workshop in Scotland on August 13, 1996.
Inquiry was made if the ECT committee could be a co-sponsor of the
workshop. A motion was made to request an official invitation
addressed to us (we could then forward the invitation to ASCE).
Bilal agreed to work on that and send a copy of the program to
Melhem who will distribute it to the committee members. Also
Garrett will send Melhem a copy of the workshop notes or table of
content for distribution.
EG-SEA-AI is looking for a European journal on AI and Engineering.
It is possible and desirable to have a joint special issue of JCCE
on the European Group activities. The EG-SEA-AI is the counterpart
to our ECT group.
Nelson pointed out that the ASCE Structural Division is pleased
with this type of international cooperation.
6.d. Other suggestions for activities
It will be beneficial to conduct an ongoing dialogue on our e-mail
bulletin board.
New communications and methods for information exchange were
discussed. Nelson talked about a home page for Civil Engineering.
A web server needs to be approved before anything could be put on
it. Different topics and detailed descriptions on emerging
computing technologies can be discussed.
ASCE is considering putting the conference proceedings on CD-ROM
with hypertext. It is at the proposal stage. It may cost above
$1000 though.
7. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 10:40 PM.
Submitted by:
Hani Melhem (Secretary)