The WE-UQ desktop application is a user-facing portal for cutting-edge engineering workflows targeting extreme wind demands on structures. It is a free, open-source, graphical software for simulating a structures's response with uncertainty quantification (UQ) during extreme wind natural hazard loading. The application's interchangeable workflow allows you to swap between popular uncertainty quantification methods (e.g. Sensitivity, Reliability, Surrogates) to upgrade your previously deterministic models. Modular design lets you drop-in your own building models (SIM), event types (EVT), nonlinear structural analysis (FEM), engineering demand parameters (EDP), and more.
- Drop-in uncertainty quantification (UQ) methods like forward propagation, sensitivity, and reliability analysis onto previously deterministic computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models using
SimCenter UQand/orDakotabackends - Model experiments from validated wind flume digital twins
- Synoptic and non-synoptic wind events supported
- Generate stochastic wind loads by taking surrounding exposure conditions, turbulence characteristics, and wind speed as inputs
- Obtain wind force-time histories from existing aerodynamics databases
- Generate integrated loads and point pressures on buildings from CFD simulations using
OpenFOAM - User-defined buildings for wind loading input and structural response output
- Design structures including Multi-degree-of-freedom (
MDOF) model, steel building model,OpenSeesmodels, andOpenSeesPymodels - Output probabilistic building responses, velocities and pressure at any point in the fluid domain
Please visit the WE-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 WE-UQ
@software{McKennaMelakuDingWanMackenzie-HelnweinYiGardnerElhaddad2024,
author = {Frank McKenna and
Abiy Melaku and
Fei Ding and
Jiawei Wan and
Peter Mackenzie-Helnwein and
Sang-ri Yi and
Michael Gardner and
Wael Elhaddad},
title = {NHERI-SimCenter/WE-UQ: Version 3.3.0},
month = april,
year = 2024,
publisher = {Zenodo},
version = {v3.3.0},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.11087165},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11087165}
}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:
WE-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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
R2D |
Regional Resilience Determination Application |  |
 |
 |
PBE |
Performance-Based Engineering Application |  |
 |
 |
EE-UQ |
Earthquake Engineering with Uncertainty Quantification Application |  |
 |
 |
WE-UQ |
Wind Engineering with Uncertainty Quantification Application |  |
 |
 |
HydroUQ |
Water-Borne Hazards Engineering with Uncertainty Quantification Application |  |
 |
 |
quoFEM |
Quantified Uncertainty with Optimization for the Finite Element Method Application |  |
 |
 |
TInF |
Turbulence Inflow Generation for CFD Application |  |
 |
 |
BRAILS |
Building Recognition with AI at Large-Scale Application | pip install BRAILS |
 |
 |
The WE-UQ application can be downloaded, installed, built, and launched on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. With a free DesignSafe account, you can run WE-UQ simulations remotely on powerful supercomputers including the Frontera, and Stampede3 systems.
The WE-UQ desktop application is available for download on Windows and Mac operating systems from the DesignSafe-CI website at the WE-UQ Download Link.
The WE-UQ installation instructions are available in the WE-UQ Installation Guide
The WE-UQ application can be built from source code on Linux, Windows, and Mac operating systems. The source code is available in this repository.
If the Github CLI is installed on your system, Clone the repository using the following command:
git clone https://github.com/NHERI-SimCenter/WE-UQ.git
Otherwise, you can clone the repository on this page by clicking on the green "Code" button and then clicking on "Download ZIP". Extract the downloaded ZIP file to a location on your system.
Instructions on building the WE-UQ application from downloaded source code are available in the WE-UQ How-To-Build Guide
The WE-UQ application can be run by executing the WE_UQ executable file. The instructions to run the WE-UQ application are available in the WE-UQ Documentation
Users with a free DesignSafe account can use the WE-UQ desktop app to launch a remote job to run simulations on powerful supercomputers with ease.
Available systems are the Frontera, Lonestar6, and Stampede3 supercomputers. Systems are located at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and made available to the user through NSF's NHERI DesignSafe-CI, the cyberinfrastructure provider for NHERI.
WE-UQ is an open-source project developed for practitioners, researchers, students, and stakeholders by our team of experts at the NHERI SimCenter. We welcome contributions from the community to help improve the application and add new features.
Interested in contributing to the open-source WE-UQ project? Find out how in the WE-UQ Documentation.
We encourage practitioners, researchers, and students to comment on what additional features or step-by-step examples they would like to see in WE-UQ. If you want it, chances are many of your colleagues will also benefit from it. We appreciate all input from the wind engineering community during the active development of WE-UQ.
Submit your requests on the SimCenter forum.
Message us on the SimCenter Message Board for any questions, feature requests, or issues.
| Developer | Role | |
|---|---|---|
| Abiy Melaku | [email protected] |  |
| Fei Ding | [email protected] |  |
| Frank McKenna | [email protected] |  |
| NHERI SimCenter | [email protected] |  |
Stay up-to-date with the latest news, updates, and releases with the NHERI Newsletter and the SimCenter Newsletter newsletters.
WE-UQ is released as an open-source research application under a BSD 2-Clause License
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1612843 and No. 2131111. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.