New earthquake monitoring tool for buildings

mageba’s new ROBO®QUAKE monitoring system is the perfect tool for warning and protecting building users and residents in case of an earthquake, and assisting owners and engineers afterwards in evaluating the impact on the structure.

Meet ROBO®QUAKE – mageba’s response to the need in seismic regions around the world for an off-the-shelf, IoT-compatible monitoring solution that can help protect buildings and their users from earthquakes. The stand-alone structural health monitoring system (SHMS) is based on mageba’s long-established ROBO®CONTROL SHMS, but is specifically tailored to provide detailed information about a structure’s behaviour before, during and after earthquakes (e.g. as illustrated by this sample report, enabling the impact of the earthquake on the structure to be assessed more quickly and more accurately. Perhaps more importantly in many cases, ROBO®QUAKE can be programmed to immediately sound an alarm signal or deliver an acoustic message over the building’s PA system, and to send immediate notification by SMS or email to the building’s owner or management. And it can even be used to automatically activate building protection equipment, e.g. for fire protection purposes or to cut off gas lines.

In addition to the immediate notifications by email or SMS, the system offers further possibilities for reporting of recorded events. Data is presented on the central data unit’s LCD display screen, and can be effortlessly printed using the unit’s small built-in printer. And of course, when connected to a remote computer, all data can be processed there. Connection to a separate computer may be established by cable (e.g. to a laptop during a site visit), or may be easily achieved, around the clock, using mageba’s ROBO®ONE cloud platform – an IoT-optimised cloud backend that was developed especially for ROBO®QUAKE and other mageba Internet-of-Things innovations such as ROBO®SMART. This cloud functionality enables the history of all recorded events to be viewed at any time, and makes detailed data available, e.g. for analysis by the building’s engineers.

This ready-made modular system is equipped with accelerographs as standard, but it may actually be equipped with virtually any type of sensor to expand its usefulness – indeed, making the system usable even for non-seismic applications. So with all the benefits it offers, with first orders having already been successfully delivered, we are confident that ROBO®QUAKE has an exciting future, becoming widely used in seismic regions around the world in years to come.

“Taking the right decisions during and right after earthquake events is a key factor in saving lives and properties. We are proud to pioneer in merging the latest cloud computing technologies with our expertise in earthquake engineering to bring IoT to the seismic protection of buildings. ROBO®QUAKE is the earthquake monitoring, alarm and protection system by mageba that allows real-time information about the vibration status of the structural components. Accompanied with state of the art algorithms that generate immediate and easy to understand summaries to assist engineers, residents, developers, owners and authorities to manage the risks associated with seismic events!”

Dr. Moustafa Imam, Chief Technical Officer – Asia Pacific, mageba China

The ROBO®QUAKE monitoring system consists of a central data unit, with an LCD display screen on top, connected to sensors (typically three) on the building

Dashboard of a typical ROBO®QUAKE monitoring system’s web interface, presenting an overview of the project-specific system

A typical data output screen with live data – available when connected to a laptop

Typical data recording on the ROBO®QUAKE web user interface showing triaxial accelerations, velocities and movements measured by the sensor at the bottom of a building during an event

Sample email notification following a seismic event, advising the strength of the earthquake and recommending appropriate actions to ensure the safety of the building’s users

Sample SMS notification of a seismic event – a condensed version of the information that may also be provided by email

An example of the kind of detailed data available from the triaxial measurements recorded at any time – typically with 120 sets of data recorded per second

Cover page of a sample report (which may be seen in full via the link in the text), automatically generated by the system following a significant event