Safe light against the dark panic of an earthquake

Project Description

An earthquake is a terrible phenomena that causes casualties, destruction and pollution around the world every year. About 40% of Russian population are occupying seismically active territory. The spontaneous character of an earthquake is what makes it so dangerous, because people get caught off guard without much time to come up with a safe course of actions. Panic and fear often overwhelm minds, which further hinders human’s ability to survive or avoid injuries. Once it happens, it is time to act immediately, and to improve their chances, people can only rely on their knowledge and training, which is often lacking. So, we aimed ourselves to come up with additional support for people who have found themselves in the middle of this cataclysm. The mechanoluminescent pendulum-driven detector was designed to help solve this problem. It is a small device that can be put in buildings in earthquake-active locations to notify people of the emergency, when exposed to subtle tectonic vibrations. Such device does not only highlight safer, most reinforced locations and escape routes, but is also completely autonomous due to it’s purely mechano-chemical nature of action. It does not require charging or electricity to be functional and can maintain its usefulness after multiple earthquakes. The basic unit of this detector is a triangle, which can seamlessly fit into a modular architectural mesh comprised of 15x15 cm units. Such devices are meant to be put into architecturally reinforced locations in the buildings, to mark places that are safe to stay at during a mild to an average earthquake. Or in case of major earthquakes, alongside paths that lead to emergency exits, staircases, fire escapes.