00:00 Wide
– earthquake wreckage
Rescuers
in earthquake wreckage
Survivor
being pulled from wreckage
c.u.
survivor on stretcher
c.u.
baby pulled from wreckage
Child
survivor being washed down
Child
crying
Buildings
collapsing
Wide
– buildings collapsing
* note – all the above is archive footage of the
1985 Mexican earthquake. It is rights free for international
broadcast and non-broadcast use.
Medium
– Second Severn Bridge, Bristol, England
Wide
– Second Severn Bridge
Exterior
University of the West of England Engineering faculty
Tilt
down front of University of Bristol Engineering faculty
c.u.
Faculty sign
Guide voice: Earthquakes are one of
nature’s most devastating forces. They claim, on average,
8,700 lives a year and the human, economic and social damage to
communities is truly staggering. Over the last one hundred years
earthquakes are estimated to have killed more than a million people
throughout the world and caused billions of dollars of damage.
The South West of England may seem an unlikely location to find
cutting edge research into living with Earthquakes, but
Universities in the region are home to some of the World’s
leading investigators in this field.
00:39 SOT: Dr. Adam Crewe,
Lecturer in Civil Engineering, University of Bristol
- “The main reason for doing earthquake
engineering research in the UK is because we're training engineers
who are going to be practising worldwide, so graduates at Bristol
university will be learning about earthquakes, they'll then get
into industry and be designing buildings that will be built
throughout the world, and they need to know how to design those to
withstand the earthquakes”.
01:00 Tilt
down, new main hall in BLADE facility
c.u.
hoist
Wide
of new hall in BLADE facility
Sequence,
research students testing
model
Guide voice: The University of Bristol will be
home to the new BLADE facility, the Bristol Laboratory for Advanced
Dynamics Engineering, bringing together a range of scientists and
equipment that will provide extensive testing and evaluation to
improve the structure and construction of buildings in areas at
risk. The key elements in reducing the impact of earthquakes on
human life are to build new structures that better resist the
effects of earthquakes and to find ways to strengthen existing
structures.
01:34 SOT – Dr.
Adam Crewe: “This new facility at Bristol is
going to be fairly unique worldwide. It’s going to be one of
the largest ones in Europe and we’ve incorporated a lot of
technologies and specific designs in the building that will allow
us to do a lot of tests that no-one else in the world can
do.”
01:51 Exterior
– University of the West of England
Interior,
engineering faculty, researcher testing base isolation
materials
c.u.
bearings testing
Extreme
c.u. bearings testing
Researcher
reaching for bearing
c.u.
bearing
Guide voice: At the nearby University of the
West of England scientists are conducting research into materials
used in base isolation techniques. Base isolation is increasingly
seen as an important means of reducing the impact of shaking on
large structures.
02:09 SOT:
Dr.Vince Coveney. Reader (Mechanical Engineering)
Engineering, Medicine & Elastomers Research Centre, University
of the West of England – “The objective of
my work is to understand better how the bearing works both this
year, shortly after the bearing is installed in the building but
also in 20 or 30 years time when the bearing is aged. How is the
bearing going to behave after that length of time?”
02:30 – Adam Crewe demonstrates a
shaking table model and the effects of base isolation on shaking
buildings. – “Here we’ve got a
little shaking table and I can actually put earthquakes through
that into these models. If I switch on the earthquake now you can
see the tall building start to vibrate quite badly – and
I’ve built into this a protection system, if I undo the base
a little bit and isolate it from the ground you can see now that
the ground moves underneath the building and the building stays
where it is. If I reconnect it back to the ground the building
starts vibrating again.”
03:04 Researcher
in testing Laboratory
Researcher’s
face reflected in computer screen
Wider
of above
Tower
model sinking into sand on shaking table
Guide voice: A good understanding of the
dynamics of all structures is essential in designing buildings to
withstand earthquakes – the more scientists understand the
effect of earthquakes on a wide range of structures the more likely
they are to develop and design new protection systems, reducing
economic impact and, most importantly, saving lives.
03:24 SOT: Dr. Vince
Coveney: “My dream, if you like, is to have
large areas of buildings isolated against earthquakes using various
base isolation techniques, so that you have a whole community on a
platform and that platform is isolated against earthquakes by base
isolation techniques.”
03:47 SOT: Dr.
Adam Crewe: “I’m very optimistic about the
future of earthquake engineering, we’re already doing very
well protecting new buildings and I’m sure that 10 or 20
years down the line we’ll have developed the technologies to
protect these older, less well built buildings.”
04:04 James Brownjohn, Professor
of Structural Engineering, University of Plymouth -
“I believe one of the areas we should be focusing on more
and more in the future is the protection of low cost dwelling
houses because there is a huge loss of life involved and it’s
a relatively small investment.”
04:17 End
of cut piece.
Additional Material
These two stories (Fear of a Fat Future and
Surviving Earthquakes) are drawn from
presentations at the BA (British Association for the Advancement of
Science) Festival of Science, held in the city of Exeter from the
4th – 11th Sept. 2004.
This additional material is a series of shots from the Festival
showing signage, visitors to the event and a lecture in
progress.
Duration of Additional material – 01.00
mins.
