Disasters by Design

"Disasters by Design" by Dennis Mileti

In 1994 the NSF commissioned a disaster study to explore how to go beyond mitigation toward a more resilient way of life, one that rolls with nature's punches and returns to normalcy quickly. Under the name "sustainable hazard mitigation," that vision is the central concept of "Disasters By Design."

The first two chapters flesh out what sustainable hazard mitigation means. Chapter 1 puts it in familiar terms, if "sustainability" is in your vocabulary. It means living politically the way we live personally, in ways our descendants won't end up paying for.

Base Level Isolation System

Takenaka has developed mid-level isolation system installed while the buildings are still being used. This new method entails improving and classifying the columns on intermediate floors of an existing building into flexible columns that incorporate rubber bearings (base isolation systems) and rigid columns which have been wrapped in steel plates to add to their toughness. A combination of these two types of columns is then used to improve the earthquake-resistant performance of the building as a whole. On this occasion this method was applied to a project to improve the earthquake resistance of the head office of Himeji Shinkin Bank (Himeji City). This is the first method of improving earthquake resistance in Japan that classifies the columns on the same floor as flexible columns and rigid columns, and it is the first case in west Japan (the Kansai region) of attaching rubber bearings by cutting columns on the intermediate floors of an existing building.