The Kids Are All Right: Designing an Earthquake-Resilient Classroom Table

<p>In the seismically active region of New Zealand the threat of earthquakes is ever-present with potential implications for residents of all ages. As school children spend a large extent of their daily lives within the classroom, it is vital that they are provided with an effective means to protect and prepare themselves for natural disasters. Through the application of a qualitative, ethnographic, and ‘research through design‘ methodological approaches, this research has informed the design of a classroom table that effectively promotes safety and resilience around seismic events. Through consultation with school students and teaching staff, typologies of existing furniture and the specific needs of classroom tables in contemporary primary school environments have been evaluated within a contemporary New Zealand school context. While the development of the design aims to be appropriate for everyday use, the primary objective is to investigate the role that furniture can play in mitigating the physical threat of seismic events on children. The central research question asks: How might furniture effectively function to mitigate the physical threat of earthquakes and aid in facilitating education regarding earthquake preparedness within the context of New Zealand’s primary schools? The functions of the resultant product output - the ‘Earthquake-Resilient Classroom Table’ - are three-fold: the design aims to provide a robust structure that physically protects children during earthquakes; enable a system that alerts students when safety procedures should be implemented; and, facilitate the education of students in earthquake safety and preparedness procedures according to established practices employed in New Zealand schools. As a pervasive means of providing immediate safety and encouraging preparedness, the proposed design outcome is a prime example in the application of alternative functions and innovative technologies in the design of contemporary furniture. The focus on earthquake safety within school environments addresses a pertinent issue that has received minimal prior investigation or addressment through design, both in New Zealand and internationally. This research aims to foster discourse within the design discipline regarding new conceptualisations of design that meet the needs of contemporary school environments, and to inspire the development of furniture designs that meet the safety needs of children in natural disasters within New Zealand and beyond.</p>

The Kids Are All Right: Designing an Earthquake-Resilient Classroom Table

<p>In the seismically active region of New Zealand the threat of earthquakes is ever-present with potential implications for residents of all ages. As school children spend a large extent of their daily lives within the classroom, it is vital that they are provided with an effective means to protect and prepare themselves for natural disasters. Through the application of a qualitative, ethnographic, and ‘research through design‘ methodological approaches, this research has informed the design of a classroom table that effectively promotes safety and resilience around seismic events. Through consultation with school students and teaching staff, typologies of existing furniture and the specific needs of classroom tables in contemporary primary school environments have been evaluated within a contemporary New Zealand school context. While the development of the design aims to be appropriate for everyday use, the primary objective is to investigate the role that furniture can play in mitigating the physical threat of seismic events on children. The central research question asks: How might furniture effectively function to mitigate the physical threat of earthquakes and aid in facilitating education regarding earthquake preparedness within the context of New Zealand’s primary schools? The functions of the resultant product output - the ‘Earthquake-Resilient Classroom Table’ - are three-fold: the design aims to provide a robust structure that physically protects children during earthquakes; enable a system that alerts students when safety procedures should be implemented; and, facilitate the education of students in earthquake safety and preparedness procedures according to established practices employed in New Zealand schools. As a pervasive means of providing immediate safety and encouraging preparedness, the proposed design outcome is a prime example in the application of alternative functions and innovative technologies in the design of contemporary furniture. The focus on earthquake safety within school environments addresses a pertinent issue that has received minimal prior investigation or addressment through design, both in New Zealand and internationally. This research aims to foster discourse within the design discipline regarding new conceptualisations of design that meet the needs of contemporary school environments, and to inspire the development of furniture designs that meet the safety needs of children in natural disasters within New Zealand and beyond.</p>

Development and Validation of a Post-Earthquake Safety Assessment System for High-Rise Buildings Using Acceleration Measurements

After a major seismic event, structural safety inspections by qualified experts are required prior to reoccupying a building and resuming operation. Such manual inspections are generally performed by teams of two or more experts and are time consuming, labor intensive, subjective in nature, and potentially put the lives of the inspectors in danger. The authors reported previously on the system for a rapid post-earthquake safety assessment of buildings using sparse acceleration data. The proposed framework was demonstrated using simulation of a five-story steel building modeled with three-dimensional nonlinear analysis subjected to historical earthquakes. The results confirmed the potential of the proposed approach for rapid safety evaluation of buildings after seismic events. However, experimental validation on large-scale structures is required prior to field implementation. Moreover, an extension to the assessment of high-rise buildings, such as those commonly used for residences and offices in modern cities, is needed. To this end, a 1/3-scale 18-story experimental steel building tested on the shaking table at E-Defense in Japan is considered. The importance of online model updating of the linear building model used to calculate the Damage Sensitive Features (DSFs) during the operation is also discussed. Experimental results confirm the efficacy of the proposed approach for rapid post-earthquake safety evaluation for high-rise buildings. Finally, a cost-benefit analysis with respect to the number of sensors used is presented.

Simplified Analytical/Mechanical Procedure for Post-earthquake Safety Evaluation and Loss Assessment of Buildings

The crucial need to develop and implement simple and cost-effective repair and retrofit strategies and solutions for existing structures has been once again emphasized, if at all needed, by the recent catastrophic earthquake events. The significant socio-economic impacts of the Canterbury earthquakes sequence in 2010–2011 as well as of the “series” of independent events within few years in Italy (L’Aquila 2009; Emilia 2012; Central Italy 2016) have triggered a stepchange in the high-level approach towards the implementation of seismic risk reduction, introducing either a mandatory enforcement or significant financial incentives for a national-wide program to assess (and reduce by remedial intervention) the seismic vulnerability/capacity of the whole (non-dwelling) building stock, including safety and expected repairing costs (direct economic losses). This chapter provides an overview of the motivations, challenges and (possible) solutions for such a complex and delicate task with the intent to stimulate awareness, discussion and synergetic actions within the wider international community. Particular focus will be given to the development and on-going continuos refinement of a simplified analytical-mechanical methodology—referred to as SLaMA (Simple Lateral Mechanism Analysis) method—as part of a proposed integrated methodology for either pre- and post-earthquake safety evaluation and loss assessment of buildings, in order to support the engineering community and stakeholders through the various steps of the decision making process of risk (assessment and) reduction.

Earthquake Safety Assessment of Buildings through Rapid Visual Screening

Earthquake is among the most devastating natural disasters causing severe economical, environmental, and social destruction. Earthquake safety assessment and building hazard monitoring can highly contribute to urban sustainability through identification and insight into optimum materials and structures. While the vulnerability of structures mainly depends on the structural resistance, the safety assessment of buildings can be highly challenging. In this paper, we consider the Rapid Visual Screening (RVS) method, which is a qualitative procedure for estimating structural scores for buildings suitable for medium- to high-seismic cases. This paper presents an overview of the common RVS methods, i.e., FEMA P-154, IITK-GGSDMA, and EMPI. To examine the accuracy and validation, a practical comparison is performed between their assessment and observed damage of reinforced concrete buildings from a street survey in the Bingöl region, Turkey, after the 1 May 2003 earthquake. The results demonstrate that the application of RVS methods for preliminary damage estimation is a vital tool. Furthermore, the comparative analysis showed that FEMA P-154 creates an assessment that overestimates damage states and is not economically viable, while EMPI and IITK-GGSDMA provide more accurate and practical estimation, respectively.