Friday 28 September 2012

Earthquake technology

Fantastic, modern technology going to completely protect mankind from natural disasters, especially earthquake which that killed a half thousand people in one time.

According to the BBC report, "Chile hopes earthquake technology can help save lives" a huge 8.8 magnitude earthquake impress in the Chilean's memory. Construction technology, high flexible steel buildings,  access of water to the cut off communities by flexible polyethylene pipe lines, high efficiency instant alert softwares all of them are the useful stuffs which that they are trying to do more.

Surely, earthquake will occur one days but we don't know when it'll happen. from the record, It occur by the cycle, maybe 100 years or 1000 years, no one know. but  I appreciate that the chilean government concern their people. They learned to deal with the unpredictable disaster.

Amazingly, the 190 meters building still alive after 8.8 magnitude earthquake attacked Santiago. It assures me that some subjects I learned in the university can be true and I though that there are many new technologies in Japan where earthquake occur frequently as well.

In Thailand, we have just enforced new regulations for the structural engineers but it can be done only the new buildings. For the old buildings, I heard that AIT(Asian Institute of Technology) has a research about reinforce structure with 30cm wild carbon fiber sheets. They rap it at the upper and lower of the column. Then, they tested it by applied horizontal force with the same earthquake frequency.

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Reference
Katie Manning. (2012, September 25). Chile hopes earthquake technology can help save lives. BBC News Technology. Retrieved September 28, 2012 from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19589471

9 comments:

  1. The first time I ever experienced an earthquake was when I was living in Taiwan for a year. I was on the tenth or so floor of a building one afternoon, working with a small group of people, and sunlight streaming in, when I suddenly felt a weird jolt. I thought I was about to faint or something, but when I looked up, I saw that everyone else had felt the same thing. Then I realised it was an earthquake. Actually, it was only a strong tremor, and it wasn't repeated, but it did leave me feeling a bit unsettled. I would be very happy not to have that experience again, and certainly no stronger one.

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  2. If anything happens on Mars, human will know. But, we could not predict when or where earthquake will happen. As many Thai people always say, we always well know others, but we have not well known ourselves. If we know cause of earthquake, we will be save from earthquake.
    Luckily, although Thailand is risky, there are not severe earthquake here.

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  3. I also felt a mini earthquake once in Thailand. I remembered that I was shopping at Siam Paragon around 9 p.m. and I felt a little dizzy. At first I thought that I had an headache because of a long hour working. After I went home and found that was an an earthquake in Myanmar which located on the north of Thailand. Also, many people who were in high buildings at the time felt the same as me. I agree with Peter that I would be appreciated not to experience any real earthquake.

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  4. When I live in Japan, earthquake is not scared except massive earthquake, but I was worried about earthquake in Bangkok because I heard many building are not earthquake-resistant construction. However, I understood the earthquake-resistant construction is not important here in Bangkok because there are not earthquake. The buildings of earthquake-resistant construction are high cost. It’s just waste money here. I want to live where it is not earthquake forever. I wonder there are not earthquake on the earth.

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    Replies
    1. Mori,
      It worries me, too. But I believe Bangkok is not in danger of a serious earthquake. (Is this right? Does anyone know for sure?)

      I guess that more modern, upmarket buildings are probably safer, but again, I really don't know if this is right or not. Did you read last week's BBC News report "Chile Hopes Earthquake Technology Can Help Save Lives"? The higher, modern buildings survive when a lot of smaller buildings collapse (Manning, 2012).

      Reference
      Manning, K. (2012, September 25). Chile hopes earthquake technology can help save lives. BBC News Technology. Retrieved September 30, 2012 from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19589471

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    2. No, I haven't read it, but I will bring the news tomorrow, and I will read it in the bus and BTS while I am coming to AUA.

      The higher, modern buildings survive when a lot of smaller buildings collapse (Manning, 2012).

      I agree with this. After reading the BBC news. I will comment here again. Maybe, tomorrow...

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    3. I’m interested in a geo-targeted system. Maybe, there is the system similar it in Japan. However, we know when the earthquake happen is a few seconds ago. It’s not enough time. We want to know at least 1 minute before the earthquake. If we have the time, we can turn off the gas. And then a big fire doesn’t breaks out. I hope that the technology improves as soon as possible.

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  5. I heard that many modern buildings were built with earthquake-resistant structure. However, they resist to some extent. Hopefully, they can resist to might occur.

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  6. I've heared from a friend, who works in a tall earthquake-resistant building in Tokyo, that on 11 March, the buiding swayed so hard that she felt, as if her body swaying for several days after the earthquake. Even there are state-of-the-art technologies to reduce the damage caused by natural disasters, they are sometimes far beyond our estimation as the last big earthquake and tunami in Japan. I hope that someday we can forecast it, earlier enough to be possible to evacuate safely.

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