Faculty and researchers from Purdue's School of Civil Engineering and Rosen Center for Advanced Computing, together with a consortium of engineering companies led by Applied Research Associates (ARA), have been awarded a contract with a value of up to $9.9M to assist the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), U.S. Department of Commerce, in the creation of a digital repository of data related to natural and manmade disasters, and infrastructure failures.

The project is part of NIST's Disaster and Failure Studies Program, which provides for the establishment of teams to assess: (1) building and physical infrastructure performance, and (2) emergency response and evacuation procedures in the wake of disaster and failure events resulting in substantial losses.  The objective of the program is to promote the implementation of recommendations from disaster and failure and studies for: (1) improvements to codes, standards, and practices and (2) filling gaps in current knowledge about buildings, infrastructure, emergency response, and human behavior.

The civil engineering profession is at a turning point.  It has amassed much experience from centuries of observation, trial-and-error, and numerical analysis.  But never before has the profession had the opportunities that exist today thanks to the rapid advance of information technology.  With today's tools, the profession can classify, preserve, and analyze data on the performance of the built environment at scales that are orders of magnitude larger than what could be done before.  This contract promises to transform the way engineering is done by providing the profession with well classified, reliable field data to evaluate systematically construction and design practices.