ARCHIMEDE INSTITUTE


Showing posts with label WHY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WHY. Show all posts

THE INSTITUTE'S MISSION

Our mission is to use our diverse pool of experience to improve the design, the production and thus the availability of:
  • Cyclone shelters for hurricane prone areas.
  • Refugee and medical shelters for harsh environments.
  • Temporary housing serving vastly diverse clienteles.
  • Low-cost social-housing in difficult physical or social environments.
  • Rebuilding programs for disaster zones, flooded areas, tsunami, earthquake and hurricane victim zones. These programs include everything from low-cost social housing to high-end beach resorts.
  • Mobile or temporary housing units for health, security and logistic workers.
  • Fully equiped headquarters for NGOs and emergency management groups.
  • Individual housing for special needs in special contexts (More later).
Our aim is to help alleviate the worldwide shortages of these special construction projects. Our basic aim is to use all our skills and experience to make these more economical to produce while infinitely more reliable. To do all of this on a fast-track procurement , design, testing, manufacturing and delivery schedule is our ultimate goal. Ours is a non-profit organization and all of our past and future development ideas are and will be of public domain. To that end our patents will be licensed free of charge to all developing or disaster afflicted nations.

  • We will always choose the most expedient and economical methods for our clients to reach their goals, forming their construction professionals, training their building crews, teaching their industrialist to produce our solutions locally.
  • To that end, after a design is accepted, we create a few prototypes for testing purposes, but also to give the representatives of the client a chance to learn the methods hands-on, living with us for a few weeks until he feels ready to duplicate our tooling and methods in his own country.
  • When the budget allows, our own multi-skill and multilingual building crews will travel to the client's country to build prototypes while training local construction workers with our techniques.
Our most sincere wish is to see a tenfold increase of the number of available cyclone shelters worldwide before 2012. This is entirely possible if we do it together. As a side benefit, the technology will seep through regular construction worldwide, helping produce a 10,000-fold increase in houses that ARE protected against hurricanes (or typhoons or cylcones). This could actually reduce the number of shelters required for an enlarging population. Before 2020? That's as good a target as any, don't you agree?

Jacques B. Poirier, Director
The Archimede Institute
Cantamar MX

TSUNAMI PROBABILITIES

A total of 482 tsunamis have been reported in the 20th Century alone, with at least 133 having a runup greater than 1.5 meters. We know that Japan, the West Coast of South America, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Kamchatka, and the Kuril Islands are potential tsunami generating areas. We know that these are the boundaries of major tectonic plates. But what about all the other subplates of the inland seas that have produced also the big destructive tsunamis and for which we have not established seismic gaps?

Where in the Pacific Ocean can we expect the big tsunamis in the 21st Century other than the areas mentioned? Let us be more specific. There are many tsuna A total of 482 tsunamis have been reported in the 20th Century alone, with at least 133 having a runup greater than 1.5 meters. We know that Japan, the West Coast of South America, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Kamchatka, and the Kuril Islands are potential tsunami generating areas. We know that these are the boundaries of major tectonic plates. But what about all the other subplates of the inland seas that have produced also the big destructive tsunamis and for which we have not established seismic gaps?

Where in the Pacific Ocean can we expect the big tsunamis in the 21st Century other than the areas mentioned? Let us be more specific. There are many tsunamigenic regions that have shown high density of seismic energy release and where large future tsunamis can be expected. For example, one such area is a segment of the Peruvian coastal region between 8.5° S and 14° S. This is a region of extremely high seismic energy release and site of large but infrequent historical tsunamis. Other parts of the South American seismic belt are tsunami gap regions and these regions in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries produced several destructive tsunamis, destroying such towns in Chile as Arica, Antofagasta and Valparaiso. There is also a great potential for another destructive tsunami on the Pacific side of Colombia, in the vicinity of the State of Narino. The west coast of Mexico can be expected to experience larger tsunamis. Large destructive tsunamis can be expected again in the Moro Gulf in the Philippines, in the Celebes and Sulu Sea, in the Java Sea and elsewhere in the South West Pacific.

migenic regions that have shown high density of seismic energy release and where large future tsunamis can be expected. For example, one such area is a segment of the Peruvian coastal region between 8.5° S and 14° S. This is a region of extremely high seismic energy release and site of large but infrequent historical tsunamis. Other parts of the South American seismic belt are tsunami gap regions and these regions in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries produced several destructive tsunamis, destroying such towns in Chile as Arica, Antofagasta and Valparaiso. There is also a great potential for another destructive tsunami on the Pacific side of Colombia, in the vicinity of the State of Narino. The west coast of Mexico can be expected to experience larger tsunamis. Large destructive tsunamis can be expected again in the Moro Gulf in the Philippines, in the Celebes and Sulu Sea, in the Java Sea and elsewhere in the South West Pacific.

DISASTERS

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