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...

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...

In this chapter we explore how people build new theories in the context of collaborative scientific thinking. As illustrated by many of the chapters in this volume, our default notion of “scientific thinking” has changed from that of the lone scientist or student toiling away on a magnum opus or in the laboratory, to that of people working as part of collaborative groups who negotiate goals for...

Earthquake Alarm Systems, or ElarmS, is a network-based earthquake early warning (EEW) system developed in California. This dissertation concerns the transition of ElarmS from research prototype to production-grade code. We test ElarmS' performance for large earthquakes with an extensive dataset of large events from Japan. Using the Japanese dataset and results, we develop a statistical error m...