Disasters

Back in 2020, Google kicked off a project to crowdsource signals from Android phones that an earthquake might be imminent. This global earthquake detection grid worked rather well, and delivered millions of alerts ahead of a shake.

Researchers at Australia's RMIT University have devised a simple and clever contraption that could make drinking water available in disaster-stricken areas, by pulling it out of thin air.

Hydrogen-fueled trucks can keep thousands of tons of carbon out of the air every year. A prototype rescue truck from the US Department of Energy shows just how viable the clean-burning haulers are becoming – by bagging a new world record.

When disaster strikes, drones and robots can be sent into danger zones to scout for survivors. The RoBoa from a student team at ETH Zurich is designed to snake its way through debris that would stop other solutions in their tracks.

This mobile manufacturing machine turns rubble from destroyed buildings into bricks – bricks which can be stacked and joined together Lego-style to form mortarless structures. Years in the making, the first mobile brick factory is headed to Ukraine.

Self-deploying sea barriers offer coastal towns some protection from the destructive forces of tsunamis – but one problem can arise when power goes out in a disaster scenario. Hence this Japanese proposal for a wall that generates its own power.

The search for survivors at disaster sites is one of the most commonly suggested uses for drones. If those people are buried under debris, however, they won't be visible. That's where LUCY comes in, as it could let drones locate survivors by sound.

Humanitaria has created a cardboard bed for the critical first 24 hours of a humanitarian emergency. The beds can be manufactured at 1,000 units per hour for a 10th of the cost, assembled 200 times quicker, and landed where needed 100 times faster.

At disaster sites, it's not uncommon for both the water supply and electrical grid to be out of commission. That's where a new system may someday come in, as it utilizes just a small amount of electricity to desalinate seawater for drinking.

We've all seen footage of disaster victims being hoisted into helicopters, in litter-type stretchers. It's not a good thing if those litters start spinning or swaying, though, which is what the thrust-vectoring Vita Rescue System is designed to stop.

While scientists have already created tight-space-exploring robots based on snakes and cockroaches, rats are also highly adept at squeezing through narrow openings. They now have a robotic equivalent of their own, in the form of the SQuRo.

When arriving at a disaster site, one of the most crucial tasks is to locate any survivors who may be trapped in the debris. A new module is designed to let drones do so, by detecting the radio signals of victims' mobile phones.