Introduction to NEES's Unique IT Infrastructure

The NEES Cyberinfrastructure Center (NEESit) is a service-focused partnership that operates and supports the extensive IT infrastructure used by the NEES program.

Central to this infrastructure is the NEESgrid software distribution, which was originally developed under a System Integration Award led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications over the course of three years ending September 30, 2004. For the next ten years, NEESit will evolve the NEESgrid distribution and other NEES software in order to better support the IT needs of earthquake engineering research.

NEES's software and services link earthquake researchers across the U.S. with leading-edge computing resources and research equipment, allowing collaborative teams (including remote participants) to plan, perform, and publish their experiments.

Through NEES software, researchers can:

  • remotely observe and participate in NEES experiments
  • access and contribute to a curated data repository
  • access computational simulation resources and open-source analytical tools
  • access collaborative tools for planning, executing, and analyzing experiments




NEESit Services

To facilitate the long-term round-the-clock operation of production-level services that are flexible and responsive to changing priorities, NEESit has adopted what's called a "services-based approach" including the following components:

  • Scheduled Network and Grid Services: Wide area network, reliable and secure transport of data, and robust system-level software
  • Data Ingestion Services: Tools for describing data as well as the software supporting the capture and storing of experimental data
  • Data Storage Services: Reliable and long term data archive for storing the results of physical and computational experiments
  • Collaboration Services: Support for project-oriented discussion groups, document sharing, and community bulletin boards
  • Web Services: NEESinc web pages, training materials, and user documentation
  • Telepresence Services: Support for remote participation in experiments, real-time video and data viewing, and videoconferencing
  • Data Search and Analysis Services: Tools and interfaces for searching and retrieving experimental data
  • Visualization Services: Tools for visualizing experimental data
  • Simulation Services: Tools for performing numerical simulations and interfacing simulations with experimental functions
  • User Support Services: Support for user calls and email questions, electronic discussion groups, documentation, training, and user satisfaction surveys

More About NEESit and NEES Software