Application of Earthquake Early Warning System to Seismic-Isolated Buildings

Abstract

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has developed an earthquake early warning system to release information in the event of earthquake, and this system has been in practical use since 2007. Meanwhile, structural health monitoring technology has been attracting attention from those who want to save time in determining the structural health of buildings and who want to detect earthquake resistance performance and damage sustained. Practical applications of this technology have also begun. Seismic-isolated buildings have been developed to protect building structures and keep properties safe from earthquakes and this is significantly effective means to protect properties as a preventative measure against earthquake. The technology is based on the past experiences of the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995. Seismic disaster prevention technologies have been further developed since then against the severe, large scale damage to buildings and loss of human life which could be incurred by earthquakes. This should be a system as safe and secure hardware and software as a system in building structures, in addition to the current situation and earthquake disaster prevention of structure itself. This paper describes the earthquake early warning system used to tackle the threat of earthquakes. And the paper shows two applications of the earthquake early warning system and structural health monitoring technologies to seismic-isolated buildings.