The purpose of this study is to develop a new system for measuring leg motions using a portable three-dimensional accelerometer. The measuring system is composed of acceleration sensors (Micro Stone, MA3-10Ac), a data logger, a data reader, and a personal computer. The personal computer draws a graph of the acceleration of movements (i.e., accelerogram) from the output signals of the accelerati...

Expert systems (ES) are a branch of applied artificial intelligence. The basic idea behind ES is simply that expertise, which is the vast body of task-specific knowledge, is transferred from a human to a computer. ES provide powerful and flexible means for obtaining solutions to a variety of problems that often cannot be dealt with by other, more traditional and orthodox methods. Thus, their us...

Statistic analyses demonstrate that the probability of earthquake occurrence in many earthquake regions strongly depends on the time of day, that is on Local Time (e.g. Conrad, 1909, 1932; Shimshoni, 1971; Duma, 1997; Duma and Vilardo, 1998). This also applies to strong earthquake activity. Moreover, recent observations reveal an involvement of the regular diurnal variations of the Earth’s magn...

Using energy absorption systems in the structures with malfunctioning components is of paramount importance. By absorbing the seismic energy, these systems help the components of the structure to remain resilient during earthquake. In the present study, viscous dampers were applied in order to enhance the reactions of tall building with belt truss. To assess the response of a structure under e...

Rapid evaluation of demand parameters of different types of  buildings is crucial for social restoration after damaging earthquakes. Previous studies proposed numerous methodologies to measure the performance of buildings for assessing the potential risk under the seismic hazard. However, time-consuming Nonlinear Response History Analysis (NRHA) barricaded implementing a prompt loss estimation ...

The present study investigated the role of intensive care units (ICU) during disasters, including the responses of our ICU following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. Our ICU comprises 8 beds for postoperative inpatients and those with rapidly deteriorating conditions; 20 beds in an emergency unit for critically ill patients; and 17 beds for neonates. It is important to secure ...

Recognizing seismic waves immediately is very important for the realization of efficient disaster prevention. Generally these systems consist of a network of seismic detectors that send real time data to a central server. The server elaborates the data and attempts to recognize the first signs of an earthquake. The current problem with this approach is that it is subject to false alarms. A crit...

This paper investigates the application of Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) method for the optimization of Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) employed for high-rise structures including Soil Structure Interaction (SSI). The model is a 40-story building, and Newmark method is utilized for the structure response to Bam earthquake data. The objective is to decrease both maximum displacement and accelerati...

Using energy absorption systems in the structures with malfunctioning components is of paramount importance. By absorbing the seismic energy, these systems help the components of the structure to remain resilient during earthquake. In the present study, viscous dampers were applied in order to enhance the reactions of tall building with belt truss. To assess the response of a structure un...