Movers and shakers [Control Safety]

The paper mentions that man´s fear of earthquakes is helping him devise a control system to mitigate their impact on buildings. The technology is classified according to three types of system passive, active and semi-active or hybrid. Passive systems are the most mature of the three, and rely simply on absorbing or dissipating someof an earthquake´s energy, with no feedback between them, the building´s structural elements and the ground. The systems are further divided into energy dissipaters, base isolators and tuned mass dampers.