Digital gareki archives: An approach to know more about collapsed houses for supporting search and rescue activities

The paper presents an approach to an engineering of “gareki”, which generally means destroyed or disordered structures in Japanese. Gareki has never been a subject for both natural sciences and engineering. Therefore we have had less scientific knowledge about gareki, while search and rescue activities in earthquake disasters need it much. The first part of the paper discusses what to be studied about gareki with respect to search and rescue activities. To share knowledge about gareki, the concept of digital gareki archives is explained and four approaches for gareki data acquisition are discussed. As a prototype of digital gareki archives, a computer software system named Virtual Gareki Field (VGF) which generates digital gareki data based on collapsing process simulation has been developed and models and tools related to VGF are explained.