Quality needs of IT infrastructure in modern earthquake engineering laboratories

Abstract

The paper presents some ideas about the quality needs for Information Technology (IT) infrastructure as part of the equipment required in modern Earthquake Engineering Laboratories. Considering the size and the services offered today by advanced testing laboratories in earthquake engineering and seismic risk management, many types of IT solutions are available. There is also a large variety of tests, in terms of specimen weight and/or geometry, which requires specific IT infrastructure and corresponding equipment to be deployed. From the point of view of the quality requirements of the specific equipment of IT infrastructure, three different application areas need to be considered: the control of experimental platforms, the data acquisition networks gathering experimental data and the computing power necessary for the simulation of the tests and the post processing of experimental data. After presenting the comparative analyses of IT infrastructure needs in Earthquake Engineering laboratories world wide, some distributed patterns related to the emerging IT infrastructure are analysed. Some quality needs for certain specific IT components are also identified. The questions arising from the variation in the conditions and the needs between the different countries where future laboratories may be located are also addressed; for this, the highlights various quality requirements of standards from the US and Europe, complementary to the usual quality needs of advanced Earthquake Engineering laboratories. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012.