E-Technologies for Wind Effects on Structures Tracy Kijewski a , Dae Kun Kwon a , Ahsan Kareem a a NatHaz Modeling Laboratory, University of Notre Dame, 156 Fitzpatrick Hall, Notre Dame, IN, USA ABSTRACT: The fusion of engineering and information technologies provides today’s engineer with the potential for analysis and research programs that defy geographic boundaries and create new venues for remote sensing and data analysis and archiving. The following study discusses the use of information technologies in two wind engineering projects to enhance the accessibility, organization, interpretation and dissemination of data. The first is an ongoing full- scale monitoring program involving several tall buildings in the city of Chicago. As the management of years of full-scale data from this project poses a daunting task, Internet technologies provide an attractive solution, through local communications hubs and secured web interfaces to catalog, convert, download and display the measured time histories. Similar interfaces are also developed in the second study to provide interactive frameworks for manipulation of wind tunnel data to produce preliminary estimates of wind-induced response for alongwind, acrosswind and torsion: a prototype for the next generation of e-codes and standards. KEYWORDS: wind engineering, JAVA, WWW, database, information technologies. 1 INTRODUCTION Internet technologies have emerged as promising solutions to the traditional challenges in full- scale monitoring projects and in transmission and sharing of experimental data with the broader wind engineering community. Recent advancements not only facilitate the transmission of data from the remote computing stations to a host computer, but the emergence of JAVA-based applets now permit data retrieval and analysis by authorized users worldwide. In particular, within the context of larger health monitoring initiatives, such use of Internet technologies and simplified user interfaces can facilitate the active involvement of building owners and management, helping to improve the overall attitude toward monitoring of structures within the United States. Since most users are already equipped with a working understanding of the Internet, as well as the appropriate hardware and software, Internet-based monitoring and sharing of data become inexpensive tools to facilitate long-term monitoring initiatives. This study will discuss how JAVA-based applets and other information technologies are being utilized in two wind engineering research programs to enhance the ability to interpret and share experimental data worldwide. 2 DATA PORTALS IN FULL-SCALE MONITORING Possibly the greatest challenge in long-term monitoring projects is the management, transfer, processing and dissemination of collected data. Traditionally, the archiving of data and its analysis was conducted on a single platform at an isolated location, often in close proximity to the monitored structure. However, with the advancement of computer and Internet technologies,