Earthquake engineering public activities in Taiwan

Since 2000 an earthquake engineering design competition has been running in Taiwan for high school students and undergraduates and for the last three years this activity has been expanded to include a competition for postgraduates. The scope of the competition, originally developed in the UK to inspire school children about mathematics and physics using the medium of earthquake engineering, has been extended in Taiwan specifically to encourage a greater awareness of good earthquake resistant design practice. The high school and undergraduate competitions require the design and construction of a model of a three storey building.These buildings are then loaded and tested to destruction on a large shaking table at NCREE (Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering), Taipei. The winning design being the model with the best efficiency,which is calculated as the size of the earthquake survived divided by the mass of the structure. The postgraduate competition, developed by NCREE, is more challenging than the other competitions requiring the students to develop and install a retrofit solution for a non-seismically designed two storey building. The competitions have been very successful and have generated a lot of press and TV publicity for the NCREE facilities and the research activities underway in Taiwan. It is hoped that the development and use of activities such as this will increase general awareness of the importance of good design and help reduce the likelihood that inappropriate structures are built where earthquakes are a hazard.