Design of a Life-Saving School Desk for Kindergarten Pupils During Seismic Activity
I.C. Valenzuela, N.M. Arago, Edna Luz R. Abulon, Marie Paz E. Morales · 2018
Earthquake is considered as one of the major disasters experienced in the Philippines aside from the typhoon. Because of the prediction of having "The Big One", the Philippine government started a lot of trainings on earthquake preparedness. Even the R&D of the government is focused on innovations that could help save lives once this happened. The little pupils in the school, especially the kindergarten will be protected when this happens even at low intensity. The aim of this study is to develop an automated school desk that will detect any seismic activity, provide shelter during earthquake and activate the alarm system to notify the pupils. The desk was sized based on the actual size of the table used in the kindergarten school. It has an accelerometer as a sensor which is connected to Gizduino microcontroller for triggering the linear actuator and provides protective shelter during earthquake. Aside from that, the microcontroller sends signal to the warning system to notify all people on the premise about the intensity of the seismic activity. The functionality of the prototype was tested using an earthquake simulator. It was found out the system reacts to the seismic activity (Intensity 4 - 8) with a response time of approximately 4.5 seconds.