This joint
project was initiated and conducted jointly by Dr. Frank Molkenthin
and Dr. Shin-Jye Liang. Dr. Molkenthin of the Institut fuer Bauinformatik,
Brandenburg University of Technology at Cottbus, Germany is a
visiting scholar at the National Center for High-Performance Computing,
Taiwan. Dr. Liang of the NCHC had just spent the summer at Cottbus.
More effective communications between the two groups await further
enhancement when peering between TANet2 and the German research
network can be established. Below is a brief description of the
joint project, contributed by Dr. Molkenthin.
Coastal
engineering and management contain operation and control systems
with natural and artificial components. A pre-requisite for such
tasks is the access to the right information at the right time
in the right place -- hence a need for efficient coastal information
systems. These information systems can only be operated with close
collaboration among experts from various disciplines at organizations
located all over the world. Such collaboration demands high-performance
networks in order to have a distributed environment--to share
application and information as well as to communicate, coordinate
and cooperate over the Internet.
The introduction
of web-based collaboration to coastal engineering is an important
element of the ongoing joint Taiwanese-German (TaiGer) project.
Initial experience in Internet application between Taiwan and
Germany revealed that a new level of Internet bandwidth was required.
The exchange of virtual 3D Worlds (VRML and OpenGL), interactive
dynamic web documents (HTML, JavaScript and Java) and GIS models
(ARC/INFO) was possible but sometimes too slow for practical application.
Advanced Internet connections linking all parts of the world are
essential to web applications described above.
More information
on the TaiGer project is available at:
Contributed by Dr. Frank Molkenthin
Faculty for Architecture and Civil Engineering
Brandenburg University of Technology
Cottbus, Germany
Volume
1 
