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The role of modern technologies to safeguard hospitals during earthquakes

Proceedings article published in 2010 by Arturo Tena Colunga ORCID, O. Villegas Jiménez
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Preprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Postprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Published version: policy unknown

Abstract

During the September 19, 1985 Earthquake the performance of public and private hospitals was poor. Unfortunately, the problem is chronic, as during the October 9, 1995 Manzanillo Earthquake, a similar behavior was observed in Manzanillo. Modern technologies such as passive energy dissipation and base isolation offer multiple advantages towards the goal of constructing safe hospitals from an earthquake engineering, performance-based viewpoint. Many public hospitals in Mexico City have been retrofitted after the 1985 earthquake. However, only two of them were retrofitted with passive energy dissipators. Although Mexico was one of the pioneering countries that used modern technologies to improve the seismic safety of hospitals, the country is in a disappointing dormant status. Certainly, in order to improve the seismic safety of hospitals and their contents, Mexico needs more applications of structural control systems in hospitals. Therefore, we have to work in finding the right way to introduce these technologies to hospital owners and managers from both the public and private sectors.