Benefits and Costs of Research: A Case Study of the NIST High Performance Concrete Program

This report provides an economic review of the National Institute of Standards and Technology High Performance Concrete (HYPERCON) Program from the period FY01 through FY09. The HYPERCON research program is designed to lower the cost of concrete performance prediction by developing and applying new measurement science including materials science understanding and performance prediction. The infrastructural nature of measurement science, its hard-to-visualize character, and the diffuse nature of its economic impacts makes them difficult to assess.