This open-source research application provides an application researchers can use to predict the response of a building subjected to earthquake events. The application is focused on quantifying the uncertainties in the predicted response, given the that the properties of the buildings and the earthquake events are not known exactly, and that the simulation software and the user make simplifying assumptions in the numerical modeling of that structure. In the application, the user is required to characterize the uncertainties in the input. The application will after utilizing the selected sampling method, provide information that characterizes the uncertainties in the response measures. The computations to make these determinations can be prohibitively expensive. To overcome this impedement the user has the option to perform the computations on the Stampede3 supercomputer. Stampede3 is located at the Texas Advanced Computing Center and made available to the user through NHERI DesignSafe, the cyberinfrastructure provider for the distributed NSF funded Natural Hazards in Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) facility.
The computations are performed in a workflow application. That is, the
numerical simulations are actually performed by a number of different
applications. The EE-UQ backend software runs these different
applications for the user, taking the outputs from some programs and
providing them as inputs to others. The design of the EE-UQ
application is such that researchers are able to modify the backend
application to utilize their own application in the workflow
computations. This will ensure researchers are not limited to using
the default applications we provide and will be enthused to provide
their own applications for others to use.
This tool is under active development. Researchers are encouraged to comment on what additional features and applications they would like to see in this application. If you want it, chances are many of your colleagues also would benefit from it. Additional requests should be posted at the SimCenter forum.
Please visit the EE-UQ Research Tool webpage for more resources related to this tool. Additionally, this page provides more information on the NHERI SimCenter, including other SimCenter applications, FAQ, and how to collaborate.
- Download Application
- Step-by-Step Examples
- Documentation & Guides
- Overview Web-Page
- Forum & Feature Requests
If you use EE-UQ 
@software{McKennaZhongGardnerZsarnoczayYiSatishWangElhaddad2024EEUQ,
author = {Frank McKenna and
Kuanshi Zhong and
Michael Gardner and
Adam Zsarnoczay and
Sang-ri Yi and
Aakash Bangalore Satish and
Charles Wang and
Wael Elhaddad},
title = {NHERI-SimCenter/EE-UQ: Version 3.5.0},
month = apr,
year = 2024,
publisher = {Zenodo},
version = {v3.5.0},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.10902075},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10902075}
}and include the NHERI SimCenter's workflow architecture 
@Article{Deierlein2020,
author={Deierlein, Gregory G. and McKenna, Frank and Zsarnóczay, Adam and Kijewski-Correa, Tracy and Kareem, Ahsan and Elhaddad, Wael and Lowes, Laura and Schoettler, Matthew J. and Govindjee, Sanjay},
title={A Cloud-Enabled Application Framework for Simulating Regional-Scale Impacts of Natural Hazards on the Built Environment},
journal={Frontiers in Built Environment},
volume={6},
year={2020},
url={https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbuil.2020.558706},
doi={10.3389/fbuil.2020.558706},
issn={2297-3362},
}The challenges of natural hazards engineering are addressed by the NHERI SimCenter through a suite of applications that provide cutting-edge tools for researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders. The applications are designed to work together to provide a comprehensive solution for natural hazards engineering. A puzzle-piece diagram of the SimCenter ecosystem is shown below:
In reality, this is a software workflow representation of the PEER Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) framework that has been extended to include other natural hazards:
EE-UQ is just one part of the NHERI SimCenter ecosystem that provides cutting-edge open-source tools for natural hazards engineering. Tools like quoFEM, EE-UQ, WE-UQ, HydroUQ, PBE, and R2D work together to provide a comprehensive solution for natural hazards engineering. The SimCenter ecosytem forms a modular hierarchy that allows users to pick and choose the tools they need for their specific research or engineering problem.
While R2D is the top-level application that provides a regional resilience assessment, EE-UQ, WE-UQ, and HydroUQ provide uncertainty quantified simulations for earthquake, wind, and water-borne natural hazards, respectively. quoFEM is the backend UQ functionality they use.
Additional tools, such as BRAILS and TInF, have special use-cases including AI-augmentation of building stock and creation of turbulent wind inflow for OpenFOAM CFD simulations.
All applications are free, open-source, and available for download on the DesignSafe-CI website. See the table below for more information on each application:
| Application | Full Title | Download | GitHub | Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|
quoFEM |
Quantified Uncertainty with Optimization for the Finite Element Method Application |  |
 |
 |
EE-UQ |
Earthquake Engineering with Uncertainty Quantification Application |  |
 |
 |
WE-UQ |
Wind Engineering with Uncertainty Quantification Application |  |
 |
 |
HydroUQ |
Water-Borne Natural Hazards Engineering with Uncertainty Quantification Application |  |
 |
 |
PBE |
Performance-Based Engineering Application |  |
 |
 |
R2D |
Regional Resilience Determination Application |  |
 |
 |
BRAILS |
Building Recognition with AI at Large-Scale Application | pip install BRAILS |
 |
 |
TInF |
Turbulence Inflow Generation for CFD Application |  |
 |
 |
Tool documentation can be found at the EE-UQ Documentation Page
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants #1612843 and #2131111
NHERI-SimCenter nheri-simcenter@berkeley.edu
