Keywords: Web 2.0, cloud computing, grid technology, software as a service, seismic risk assessment, performance-based earthquake engineering, civil engineering.

In the European Strategic Research Agenda for Earthquake Engineering, which was prepared by the European Association for Earthquake Engineering, it is reported that the risk of being killed due to earthquakes in Europe in the last twenty years is about eight times higher than that observed in Japan and even eighty times higher than in the United States. High observed losses point to the need for improved seismic design and risk assessment approaches capable of achieving more accurate and predictable results. Such approaches will enable the detection of critical regions in urban areas or enable the design based on the acceptable loss, which may be expected in the design life of the structure. Since the seismic risk assessment is computationally extremely demanding and consequently time-consuming, what makes it difficult for practical application, it is necessary to develop a user-friendly and high-throughput computational environment for seismic risk assessment.

Existing high-performance and high-throughput computing facilities, such as computing clusters, big data-centres, service infrastructures and test beds, are currently restricted to elite stake-holders familiar with distributed service infrastructures, programming paradigms, workflow (WF) composition systems and their respective security infrastructures. Meanwhile, the majority of stake-holders, who are less information-technology savvy, are left out of the equation even though they are in great need of different computing environments, sharing resources, collaborating and generating value-added services and knowledge. Rather then developing a new closed platform solution for providing the above mentioned features, the ICE4RISK project [1] developed an innovative computing environment by leveraging different existing and emergent technologies, including: Web 2.0 [2,3], cloud computing [4], grid technology [5] and software as a service [6].

The paper provides an overview of the ICE4RISK project as well as brief descriptions and discussion of the underlying technologies used in the development of the computing environment. In the second part of the paper end-user scenarios are presented that utilise the computing environment and services developed.

1

High-throughput computing environment for seismic risk assessment (ICE4RISK), http://ice4risk.slo-projekt.info

2

T. O'Reilly, "What is Web 2.0? Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software", O'Reilly, published: September 30, 2005. URL

3

T. O'Reilly, "Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again", O'Reilly Radar, published: December 10, 2006. URL

4

M. Miller, "Cloud Computing: Web-Based Applications That Change the Way You Work and Collaborate Online", Que., 2008

5

I. Foster, C. Kesselman, "Concepts and Architecture", The Grid 2: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure, I. Foster, C. Kesselman, (editors), 37-63, Elsevier Inc., 2004.

6

C. Fellenstein, "On Demand Computing: Technologies and Strategies (On Demand)", IBM Press, 2004.

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