Earthquake

Portugal's OODA architectural firm has conceptualized a Disaster Education Centre that also doubles as an emergency shelter in the event of a real-life disaster. The center has been designed for the city of Istanbul and would be fully equipped with adequate technology and facilities to respond to a natural emergency. The center focuses on educating the public about disasters, with a special focus on earthquakes and floods. The design of the building reflects this theme, resembling an emergency cross symbol that has fallen onto its side, as if affected by an earthquake. Read More

New Cosmopower, a small Japanese company, has created a floating capsule to be used in the event of earthquakes or tsunamis. Following the devastating loss of life during the Tohoku earthquake in March this year, the "Noah" capsule was designed to preserve life in the face of another major catastrophe - just like its biblical namesake. Read More

When the sandfish lizard wishes to escape predators, it can actually dive beneath the surface of the sand, and then swim through it. Inspired by the sandfish, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created an undulating robot that can likewise swim through a granular medium. While that medium has so far consisted of quarter-inch plastic balls in a lab setting, the team hopes that their robot – or one of its descendants – could someday be used to tunnel through debris to rescue earthquake victims. Read More

In the aftermath of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated Japan on March 11, 2011, the country faces a massive cleanup and rebuilding effort that will take years. To assist in the dangerous task of clearing hazardous debris that stretches for hundreds of miles along Japan’s east coast, the North American arm of global defense technology company QinetiQ has announced it will provide unmanned vehicle equipment and training to aid in the colossal undertaking. Read More

Using a complex model to perform a theoretical calculation based on a U.S. Geological Survey, Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has determined that by changing the distribution of the Earth's mass, the earthquake that devastated Japan last Friday should have sped up the Earth's rotation, resulting in a day that is about 1.8 microseconds (1.8 millionths of a second) shorter. Read More

As Japan, and indeed the world, struggles to comprehend the devastation resulting from the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck on March 11, countries around the world have rushed to offer support in a number of ways. Amongst the aid flowing from the U.S. is a U-2 high-altitude, all-weather surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft that will be used to capture high-resolution, broad area synoptic imagery to help the Japanese identify the location and extent of damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami. Read More

Almost incomprehensible as the devastation from last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan has been, scientists warn that more aftershocks are on their way. In order to get all the information on current seismic activity in one place, researchers at Texas Tech University’s Center for Geospatial Technologies have developed an online, publicly-accessible world map that displays data on disturbances worldwide, almost as soon as they have occurred. Read More

Each year natural disasters and civil unrest leave hundreds of thousands of people homeless throughout the world. Many of these crises occur in developing nations where traditional building materials are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive, and where the focus is often on staying alive, not maintenance of a home. The ECO:Shield system from Innovative Composites International Inc. (ICI) may present a welcome solution. The earthquake and hurricane resistant houses use recyclable materials and according to ICI, are cheaper than both conventional and other modular constructions. They are energy efficient and durable – resisting moisture, insects, rot and mould. And they can be constructed quickly using unskilled labor: an 8' x 16' (2.4 x 4.9 meters) ECO:Shield house can be assembled in less than 45 minutes with standard tools. Read More

Researchers at the University of Bristol have developed a seismological "speed gun" which takes multiple seismic readings of single events to determine how quickly the Earth's mantle is moving. While the instruments used to measure this movement aren't hand-held or new to the field, the way that the data is interpreted is ground breaking. Read More