Press Releases | November 17, 2021

Facilitating evacuation immediately following an earthquake and the continued use of buildings

The 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes damaged municipal government office buildings, which was a large obstacle during evacuation and reconstruction. We need to develop technology that enables us to inspect municipal government offices, fire departments and other hub buildings for disaster control activities immediately after an earthquake occurs. The Earthquake Disaster Engineering Research Laboratory in Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, has developed a method for instantaneously evaluating earthquake damage to a building from the readings of the building's seismometer using machine learning technology. All city government offices in the Higashi-Mikawa area are already equipped with seismometers and a system for sharing the results of damage assessments by email immediately after an earthquake has been established. Applying the machine learning technology that has been developed will enable faster, more accurate damage assessment.

Full text: Using Machine Learning to Measure Building Earthquake Damage
TUT website: Press release