Research projects

A control system design method to improve resilience performance was developed for medical facilities. Fragility curves and a probability model of recovery time were developed based on information on earthquake damage and recovery of equipment. We proposed a control system design method that searches for LQR control parameters to maximize resilience performance using the recovery curve, which represents the time evolution of facility functionality against assumed earthquake motion, and verified the effectiveness of the method. We also developed a warm standby method for data centers, which predicts the earthquake response of servers and migrates virtual machines to the standby system based on the probability of exceeding the threshold value to maintain the functionality. In addition, we developed a seismic control system that enhances resilience performance by utilizing an elevated water tank as a sloshing damper, which is a bottleneck for functional maintenance and early recovery.

We have developed an advanced seismic control system that maintains the functions during an earthquake by coordinating with the equipment inside the building. We constructed a method to control the response based on the video by wireless communication with the equipment. In addition, we proposed a method to identify the structural parameters based on the seismic response data of the building, design the control system to minimize the damage occurrence probability, and improve the control performance, which was applied to the existing semi-active seismic isolated building. Regarding the earthquake motion simulation method, we constructed a mathematical model considering that the seismic waveforms of earthquakes with closely located hypocenters are similar. Finally, we discovered that a building subjected to seismic motion could cause torsional resonance due to inertial force perpendicular to horizontal displacement.

The purpose of this study is to construct an information and communication infrastructure that can solve the problem with extreme constraints in a smart community (SC) without affecting the existing information infrastructure and services and to implement and evaluate new SC services that could not be provided in the previous embodiments. Specifically, we demonstrate a new type of regional information infrastructure and smart community by 1. constructing a platform including HW-based SC information infrastructure that can fulfill extreme constraints, 2. proposing and implementing the SC operating system that runs on the platform and various optimization methods that are necessary for providing actual services, and 3. evaluating regional demonstrations using the proposed infrastructure and real traffic.