Early gathering system of earthquake damage information

Research Project

Project/Area Number	06558060
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Developmental Scientific Research (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Natural disaster science
Research Institution	Toyo University
Principal Investigator	HAKUNO Motohiko Toyo Univ., Dept.of Civil Eng., Professor, 工学部, 教授 (10016321)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	SUZUKI Takanobu Toyo Univ., Dept.of Civil Eng., Lecturer, 工学部, 講師 (50256773)
Project Period (FY)	1994 – 1995
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1995)
Budget Amount *help	¥2,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,400,000) Fiscal Year 1995: ¥1,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,100,000) Fiscal Year 1994: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000)
Keywords	Eathquake Disaster / Early Countermeasure to Earthquake Damage / Information of Earthquake Damage / On-line Earthquake Engineering / 地震後火災 / 地震直後対策 / 火災非難
Research Abstract	The Kobe Earthquake occurred in Japan at 5 : 46 AM on January 17,1995 was an earthquake which directly attacked an overpopulated city from a hypocenter underneath the city. This type of earthquake first occurred in Fukui, Japan as the Fukui Earthquake in 1948 (M=7.1 ; 3,895 killed) and then it occurred again in Kobe City this time. In the Kobe Earthqukake, 6,308 lives were lost (including 5,501 lives lost immediately after earthquake and additional lives lost within 2 weeks due to injuries and others). Based on the number of dead persons, this was the greatest disaster since the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 (M=7.9 & 140,000 dead persons). We, Japanese earthquake engineers, thought that various kinds of structures such as wooden house, reinforced concrete buildings, steel and reinforced concrte highway bridges in Japan are strong enough against the strong eathquake because they are designed taking into account of the higher level of the earthquake force than any other coutries in the world, up to the Kobe earthquake 1995. In this earthquake, those structure were completely damaged more severely than we supposed. Therefore, the information about how severe the damage was could not be given to anywhere including Japanese government and municipal government, and as a result, so many persons could not survive. We learned the followings from the earthquake, 1) Electricity power supply become out of order by the strong earthquake. 2) The stop of electricity power causes the stop of water supply and resultantly the fire following the earthquake can't be extinguished. 3) Video camaras installed at the top of high buildings can get early the information about the damages on structures and the fires following the earthquake. 4) For the above purpose, the video cameras and their connecting communication facilities must be safe against the strong earthquake. It is an important problem left in the future.