Invent Civil

1 | M. Damon Weiss

April 30th, 2009 at 10:48 pm

I attended the ASCE International Workshop on Computing in Civil Engineering in 2004, when it was held in Baltimore. In addition to being a civil engineer, I had always been an avid programmer and technologist. However, the topics presented at this conference completely blew my mind. One topic that made an impression on me that day was an agent-based engine that attempted to simulate evacuation of a large crowd from a stadium. The work and the graphics were largely conceptual and not fully developed yet; however the concept really opened my eyes to the power of computing in civil engineering. Years later, I discovered the following article about some research out of Arizona State University, which essentially took the concept one step further, and performed the simulation in a 3-D animated environment.

http://www.livescience.com/technology/070614_crowd_behavior.html

The 2004 conference was actually a turning point in my career. It impacted my thinking enough that I enrolled the very next year in Advanced Infrastructure Program at the Carnegie Mellon University, to pursue my Master’s degree. Be sure check out the department website and the research, if you get a chance. Coincidentally, the 2007 ASCE Workshop on Computing in Civil Engineering was actually hosted by Carnegie Mellon. I missed it, unfortunately, but a copy of the program is below.

http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~ASCE2007/conferenceprogram/ASCE2007-Workshop%20final%20program.pdf

Regards,

Damon