The Earthquake Suitcase

Name of the provider (company name or main contact name), or FIRE IN ID ? Vasiliki Kouskouna, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – vkouskouna@geol.uoa.gr

CCC addressed

Cultural changes in risk tolerance and resilience
Develop public self-protection to minimize responders exposures (TOP CHALLENGE)
Involve communities in preparing population for the worst scenario before it happens (TOP CHALLENGE)

Scope, rationale, context: general description. Precise here if this technology is currently use (eg. company name or contact info) The Earthquake Suitcase is an educational tool, based on STEM education, aiming at improving the earthquake education degree of schoolchildren. It is based on experiential education for familiarization with strong ground motion, buildings response, earthquake basics, wave physics.

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Natural Hazard Mitigation

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Best practices, doctrine, lessons learned

Short description of the solution. Technical details if relevant. Keywords.

The Earthquake Suitcase contains a portable earthquake simulator representing the horizontal shaking produced by the seismic waves. Rotational motion produced manually is converted to linear motion of a surface 45x25 cm. Buildings 3D models of various response to the shaking are constructed on the simulator surface. One portable accelerometer is mounted on the shake table surface, recording and storing the time-histories of the simulated strong shaking. The related software can represent this in real time as wave motion on a computer screen by the instructor and/or on a mobile phone or tablet by the students and perform signal analysis of wave motion.
The suitcase also contains:
- Building material for more complex structures to be tested by students
- The Emergency Kit for Earthquakes
- Books, leaflets, etc. related to earthquake education

Key words: earthquake simulator, earthquake education, shake table

TRL of the proposed solution - Innovation stage (if applicable) 5-6: Technology Developement & Demonstration

Attachment (file) HELPE CSR Panorama_ENG#6.pdf (1 MB)

Attachment (file) EqSuitc.pdf (10 MB)

Expected/scheduled future developments

In the first version of the earthquake simulator, strong motion simulation is achieved through a simple rotary-linear motion converter operating manually. In the second version, motion is produced by a motor. In the newest version, a rotator cuff will be used.

Generic comments

Project team:
Vasiliki Kouskouna
Georgios Skakas
Nikolaos Sakellariou
Dimitra Komatea
Heather Ridge