ITR: Solutions for Exchange and Utilization of Geotechnical Information

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CMS-0219463PI: Jean-Pierre BardetInstitution: University of Southern CaliforniaTitle: "ITR SOLUTIONS FOR EXCHANGE AND UTILIZATION OF GEOTECHNICAL INFORMATION"Geotechnical information describes the characteristics of upper soil deposits (typically down to a 50 m depth) on which rest most of our civil infrastructure (e.g., buildings, roads, bridges, airports, harbors, and factories). Each year, a large amount of geotechnical information is generated with great efforts and expense during the conduct of projects, including those sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and many other local, state, and federal agencies. The data and results of these projects are usually published as hardcopy reports, without digital data. In addition, the steps in data collection and processing are documented with conventional methods, making it often difficult even impossible to scrutinize, revise and apply data. An NSF workshop, held at the University of Southern California (USC) in 1998, clearly established a unanimous consensus among researchers and practitioners for a better exchange of geotechnical information. Nowadays Information Technologies (IT) unleashes new powerful opportunities for collecting, exchanging, and utilizing geotechnical information, which should be explored for the sake of our civil infrastructures.Capitalizing on the benefits from recent experiences gained during several IT projects carried out at USC since 1998, our research creates ITR methods for resolving major issues associated with the collection, exchange and utilization of geotechnical information. The research integrates different IT methods to produce a comprehensive and complete description and utilization of geotechnical information starting from the data generation in the laboratory and field to its end usage by engineers and planners involved in civil infrastructure systems. The specific objectives of the research are:1. Define versatile data structures based on the knowledge of domain experts on selected geotechnical information.2. Define metadata by geotechnical domain experts describing the processes generating geotechnical information, including development of automated metadata collection for facilitating user input.3. Develop data mining tools for geotechnical information, and creating QA/QC algorithms integrating data and metadata. The research is concerned with the development of IT methods for rendering geotechnical information usable to those involved with planning, designing, building, and maintaining our civil infrastructure systems. The tools and methods developed during the research will be tested in the realistic work environments of five research collaborators, namely the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the California Geological Survey (CGS), the Bureau of Research in Geology and Mines (BRGM) in France, and Kobe University in Japan. It is anticipated that the IT concepts developed in this research will contribute to pave the way to the creation of a virtual repository of geotechnical information to be operated in the future by a consortium of local, state and federal agencies.The research will benefit the public in many ways. It will disseminate geotechnical information to the students, researchers and practitioners. It will organize geotechnical information, and improve its archival and retrieval for local, state and federal agencies, universities, and companies. It will generate an information platform for the development of large-scale geographic information systems of natural hazards such as liquefaction-induced lateral spreads during earthquakes. It will promote education and research in engineering, and stimulate data exchange and collaboration among researchers and practitioners.