Bridge Software Institute (BSI)

Publisher Name: Bridge Software Institute (BSI)
Description:

The Bridge Software Institute (BSI) is headquartered at the University of Florida (UF) in Gainesville, Florida. It was established in January 2000 to oversee the development of bridge related software products at UF. The goals of the BSI include enhancement, maintenance, and dissemination of bridge software to address the increasing demands on the transportation industry. The BSI also anticipates the future needs of the nation-wide transportation community in the digital environment, by the development and promotion of the Data Interchange for Geotechnical and GeoEnvironmental Specialists (DIGGS) and the design of a corresponding DIGGS database. The BSI is also dedicated to providing technical assistance with the software under the Institute's auspices.

We place particular emphasis on high fidelity computational modeling and its application in advancing the basic computational methods to tackle new scientific challenges on new generations of large scale bridge engineering problems. The thrust of institutional research activities is the development of powerful computational codes and their application to the solutions of large scale bridge engineering problems through inter-disciplinary research and development in collaboration with the Structural/Geotechnical Research Groups in the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering at the University of Florida. One of the main strengths of the institute and one for which it is nationally recognized, is in nonlinear dynamic finite element analysis and its applications to solving large-scale extreme event problems.

Since 2003, the BSI has developed a robust database system that integrates the application of geotechnical engineering data and associated metadata which enables the construction of services in the digital environment. The FDOT Database System is now being used in large-scale implementations, with more applications under development. The BSI is also leading in the DIGGS project. DIGGS is a coalition of government agencies, universities and industry partners whose focus is on the creation and maintenance of an international data transfer standard for transportation related data. The coalition came into existence through coordination with the U.S. Federal Highway Administration who sponsored meetings and eventually formed the pooled fund study project.

This unique intellectual and creative combination of academia, government, and industry energizes the work of our faculty, staff, and our students. As BSI moves further into the 21st century, I expect the institute to continue to succeed and to produce new generations of robust engineering software and thus to provide reliable engineering resolution to the community of bridge engineering in the world.

Address 1:
Bridge Software Institute, University of Florida
Address 2:
P.O. Box 116580, 457 Weil Hall
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Country:
United States
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Status:
active
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