Green Buildings Put Up Stronger Defense Against Natural Disasters

June 26, 2013- Cities are prone to major damage after earthquakes or other natural disasters, but now a team of developers is creating new ways to make buildings stronger than ever.

1Mori Building, a privately-owned Japanese real estate developer, is pursuing an urban development concept that seeks to build “a city to escape into rather than a city from which people run away,” reports Forbes.

A survey of office requirements of more than 1,000 companies in Tokyo, conducted in 2011 after the earthquake, revealed that the most important criteria was earthquake resilience (92%), followed by proven disaster management by the company managing the building (55%), and onsite power generation (51%).

Mori Building’s largest real estate development, Roppongi Hills, is the prototype of a disaster-proof environment. The building includes attributes to enhance resilience, including a combined heat-and-power plant that produces electricity and recycled heat with a high-efficiency, large-scale gas turbine. The plant stayed online after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 and provided power to neighboring communities.

Green building firms in the US are pursuing similar strategies for enhancing building resilience. Last week, the Related Companies, a pioneering green building real estate firm, purchased a fleet of Capstone C65 and C200 Dual Mode microturbines from RSP Systems, which will be installed over the next two years in Related’s office buildings, apartments and mixed-use properties.

A few other ingredients of a disaster-proof building, from Mori’s website, include:

Sticky Walls: A technique in which a highly sticky substance is injected into the inside of box-shaped steel plates, and the resistance force generated alleviates shaking caused by earthquakes and wind.

Oil Dampers: These work by absorbing the shaking of the building with the resistance force at the time the oil moves. The sensor inside detects very slight shaking, and the damper controls the flow of oil, alleviating the shaking.

CTF Columns: For the columns that provide a framework for the building, the inside of the steel pipes is filled with high-strength concrete. These columns have more outstanding resistance strength and deformation capacity than previous construction methods. They are used in the Mori Tower, the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, Roppongi Hills Residences B and C, and the Hollywood Beauty Plaza.

Super Double-Deck Elevators: Mori Tower’s “super double-deck elevators” are equipped with a pantograph joint on the part of the elevator that connects two passenger cars that can expand and contract by up to two meters, making it possible for the elevator to serve floors with varying heights.                                                                                  

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