Unrealized Potential: The Socio-Technical Challenges of a Large Scale Cyberinfrastructure Initiative

Abstract

In 2007 the National Science Foundation awarded a grant to the University of Michigan, School of Information to evaluate the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering and Simulation (NEES). The objective of the evaluation is to understand how NEES is working in its first years of operation. Although NEES is a huge technological undertaking, this evaluation uses qualitative and quantitative data collection methods to consider the social and organizational aspects of NEES as well. It is a formative evaluation intended to provide guidance for the second phase of the NEES operation and to inform current cyberinfrastructure (CI) initiatives that are underway. As a precursor to the current CI initiatives, NEES is not merely an innovation in how to do EE research, but an innovation in how to do research generally. NEES has shown that useful CI can be developed on a large scale to serve a scientific and engineering research community. Its capabilities have encouraged researchers to propose and conduct more innovative experimental research that spans disciplines and research methods. As an early initiative with few examples to draw upon, NEES has also shown that developing CI on such a scale can be a difficult process that does not always go as planned. This study reports the successes and challenges NEES has experienced in the context of five major findings.