Purpose of the Meeting
The main purpose of this meeting was to explore the future of computing in civil engineering and to determine the Committee’s priorities and future activities. Also, the meeting included a discussion of a workshop on the same topic which could eventually be organized by our Committee. The meeting was attended by Dr. Princilla Nelson, the Acting Senior Engineering Coordinator and Program Director in the National Science Foundation. All members and friends of the Committee were invited to attend this important meeting. In the evening, Dr. Nelson made a presentation entitled "?Infrastructure Research and Development."
It was expected that the meeting would lead to various
good developments within our Committee and subsequently within the entire
civil engineering community. Plans included preparing a report that will
describe the major conclusions of the meeting and that will be made available
for a large audience or prepared for wide distribution. This report is
presented here and includes a collection of transparencies used for the
individual presentations with additional comments.
List of Participants
Presentations
·
"Information Technology Revolution"
Tomasz Arciszewski, George Mason
University
· "Network Computing
Impact"
Teresa Adams, University of Wisconsin,
Madison
· "Information Technology
in Construction Engineering"
Chema De LaGarza, Virginia Tech
· "Computer-Supported
Collaborative Methodologies"
Feniosky Pena-Mora, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
Minutes and Executive Summary of the Discussion
Theme of discussion: "Our Priorities and Plan of Actions"
- Opening statement from Arciszewski: ?What
to do next as a committee.?,
i.e. where do we go from here.
- Ross: Keep the goal of the committee, i.e. be a conduit
of computing technology to the industry.
- De LaGarza: Develop a taxonomy of the available Information
technologies (tools) and present it to the Civil Engineering profession.
- Topics of Interest and possible activity:
- Collaborative Engineering, Arciszewski
- Data mining, Adams
- Network computing, Arciszewski
Adams and Pena-Mora proposed that the committee prepares a booklet or monograph that would contain short papers or technical notes. This could be considered as a committee publication aimed at a large number of practitioners.
Regarding the committee mission and goals, the interaction with other committees of ASCE was discussed. The issue of a possible name change or modification was also raised. There were several indications that our committee's name should include "Information Technology" maybe as opposed to "Expert Systems. Arciszewski said that he would talk to Dr. Francois Grobler of the Database and Information Management Committee about our interactions, coordination, or even integration of both committees.
Dr. Nelson proposed that the committee considers the outreach of the large civil engineering profession possibly by organizing a 2-3 days short course that would be of interest to engineers of all levels in small, medium, and large size firms. It should present a toolbox and demonstrate example projects that were successful in using information and computing technologies to improve performance and productivity.
The discussion carried over the format and objectives
of a short course, series of tutorials, or a workshop. As part of the committee's
mission, our activity should include an outreach to the Civil Engineering
profession, and a connection to practitioners regarding issues related
to Information Technologies and Computing. The idea was to do this independently
from the Computing Congress, and outside the National ASCE. A possible
approach was to do this type of activity with local Chapters of ASCE, starting
at one location or the other, and maybe even circulate or rotate between
different locations.
Topics that were initially brought up were:
1. Collaborative Engineering
2. Network Computing
3. Knowledge-related technologies
Tommelein suggested contacting the Northern California
Construction Institute (NCCI) regarding the workshop "Exploring the Internet."
NCCI organized this workshop on April 25 at Stanford University. (Additional
information can be obtained by contacting Martin Fischer at Stanford.)
It was suggested to announce this initiative to all committee members and
stimulate a discussion on the Internet to explore the idea further. Members
will be asked to investigate in their respective city/region (local/regional
ASCE branch or section) what the needs of the civil engineering professional
community are with respect to information technology. We need to interact
with our connections in the industry. A good source would be companies
involved with our universities in research projects or consulting jobs,
state agencies (DOT, EPA, etc.), and departmental/school advisory councils
and alumni.
Objectives of the Short Course
The Short Course to be organized by the ES & AI committee will have the following objectives:
1. Reach out to practitioners to demonstrate the applicability of Information Technology to help solve their technical and professional engineering and managerial problems. Successful examples and case studies should be presented with emphasis on the short/long term benefits and time/cost savings achieved through the usage of these technologies.
2. Provide a combination of practice (applications) and new knowledge (theory). The short course should have presentations, panel discussions, and demonstrations that will include people from the industry, design firms, consulting offices, construction companies, etc., as well as academic professors. Lectures and academic presentations should be avoided.
3. Present guidelines to the usage of the existing and
forthcoming technologies. This may include a taxonomy of the tools/software
available and suggestions on how to select one tool as opposed to the others.
Efficiency of the technology, software cost, features of the tools, applicability
of the problem domain, advantages and disadvantages, etc., should provide
enough motivation to the attending audience, and justify the use of the
Information Technology. Industrial partners are encouraged.
Course Organization
Tomasz proposed having the first short course in the Washington, D.C. area. Renate and Feniosky can present some joint activity they are working on that includes teamwork, collaborative engineering, and industry involvement. Other are invited to propose topics.
Part of planning such an activity will be to determine the cost of the workshop. Costs should include course material, required software/licence, and profit sharing with ASCE.
It will be necessary, after determining the objectives of the course, to work on the course outline. One approach is to solicit a number of Position Papers (Tomasz suggested 5-pages max.) on each proposed activity to be done during the short course or workshop. We would then put these position papers on the web in our homepage and go from there.
(The call for pre-proposals was issued on May 4, 1998.
It contains detailed information about the tutorials proposal and submissions.)
SUMMARY
In conclusion, the most important outcome of the workshop
was the decision to focus immediate activities of our Committee on the
dissemination of our unique computing knowledge. Specifically, that will
be done developing a number of 4-hour tutorial units or short courses,
which will be offered in various combinations to the individual ASCE local
chapters. In this way, we will be fulfilling our educational mission and
at the same time be building improved understanding of computing and its
significance within our profession. Offering tutorials will be a meaningful
activity that could lead to many new forms of our interactions and cooperation.
Also, in the context of the ongoing reorganization of the ASCE, it will
be desirable to show our contributions to the civil engineering profession.
Respectfully Prepared by:
Hani Melhem, Committee Secretary