Post-earthquake hospital functionality evaluation: The case of Kumamoto Earthquake 2016

The Japanese Prefecture of Kumamoto experienced a series of strong earthquakes in April 2016 causing widespread damage and had a serious impact on local communities. The events caused over 3000 casualties and affected the continuity of healthcare services. Many hospitals had to be evacuated but the reasons for this evacuation are not clear. This research aims to investigate the impact of damage on the performance of the healthcare service through a survey of 118 healthcare facilities. The study connects earthquake metrics and the loss of healthcare service functionality and reveals the reasons for which facilities were totally or partially evacuated. Findings suggest that the reasons are mainly damage to buildings, critical systems, and medical equipment. It concludes by estimating that the stricken areas lost approximately 15% of their healthcare functionality. The study also concludes that the current building standards increased the performance of hospital buildings by approximately 10%; however, more attention is needed to protect architectural and critical systems

Experiments on Soil Spring Constants During Liquefaction

The present paper deals with the soil spring constant on pipeline in relation to liquefaction process. The soil spring constant is one of the most influential factors in evaluation of the pipeline failure induced by soil liquefaction. Laboratory tests were conducted using a steel pipe in order to obtain the hysteresis curve of pipe-soil layer system. Based on the experimental results, the authors propose a model of the restoring force characteristics which is represented by two soil spring constants K1 and K2. Furthermore, the authors investigated K1 and K2 in relation to the effective stress through dynamic loading tests

Damage to Water Supply System and Surface Rupture Due to Fault Movement during the 1999 Ji-Ji Earthquake in Taiwan

On September 21, 1999, a large earthquake of magnitude 7.3 (CWB) occurred in Taiwan resulting in a death toll of over 2,000 people. It was also reported that more than 12,000 buildings and houses were damaged and about the half of those totally collapsed. The present paper concerns with the damage to water supply system and surface rupture during the 1999 Ji-Ji earthquake in Taiwan. An outline of the water supply system and damage to it is presented. The relationships between the damage to water supply pipelines, pipe material, pipe diameter, etc. were investigated. Lifeline system such as electricity, water supply and gas also suffered severe damage. Survey of the surface rupture and damage evaluation of buildings was also conducted

Damage by the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake

The Tenth International Symposium on Mitigation of Geo-disasters in Asia Matsue Symposium Place: Shimane Civil Center, Matsue Date: 8 October 201

Liquefaction Countermeasure Technique by Using Logs for Carbon Storage Against Global Warming

Global warming is one of the most serious problems which faced by civil engineers in this century. Because a wood can store carbon within itself, the utilization of wood in the construction projects may contribute to the mitigation of global warming. The technique of ground improvement by installing logs into loose sand layer as a countermeasure against soil liquefaction was proposed in this study. The logs had been used as pile foundation until 1950\u27s in Japan. However, as the wood has high possibility of a decrease in strength by decay, the utilization of wood become minority in the construction projects. First, since a lot of former wooden piles were found at the riverbed of the Asuwa River in Japan in 2005, the soundness of wood was evaluated. From the test results, it was confirmed that the level of decay was extremely low and the compression strength exceeded the allowable stress of wood pile, though they were buried under the riverbed for 59 years. Second, small scale shaking table tests in a 1-g gravity field were carried out using a composite ground which was made of loose saturated sand layer and the improved ground by piling with logs. It was clarified that the logs installed in liquefiable soil layer could increase the resistance of ground against liquefaction and decrease the settlement of structure