Designing a Pattern Language For Surviving Earthquakes

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Survival Language, a pattern language designed to improve earthquake survival by passing down essential knowledge and fostering collaboration through four specific patterns.

Contribution

It presents a novel pattern language for earthquake preparedness and response, emphasizing collaborative creation and use of survival patterns.

Findings

Four patterns for earthquake survival identified

The Survival Language promotes collaboration in disaster preparedness

Pattern language can enhance knowledge transfer during emergencies

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed the Survival Language, a pattern language to support survival when a catastrophic earthquake occurs. This proposal comes from the problem that the tragedies of earthquakes are repeated, because knowledge and wisdom on how to prepare for an earthquake and what to do during an earthquake have not been passed down sufficiently. This paper presented the four patterns of the Survival Language: "Daily Use of Reserves," "Life over Furniture," "Evacuation Initiator," and "Kick Signal." In addition, we described that the Survival Language is created and used by collaborations because a pattern language has been a tool for collaboration since it was presented by Christopher Alexander.