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A New Zealand company has invented a low-cost device which allows buildings to remain as safe as houses if an earthquake hits.
The product - called a RoGlider - enables buildings to move during an earthquake without sustaining damage.
Chief executive Alan Wilson said the top half of a seismic isolator "floats" and is not connected directly to the bottom half which moves at the same speed as an earthquake.
"It [the top half] goes at a slower speed and allows the building to essentially just rock rather than shake," Wilson said.
The RoGlider is a sliding device weighing about 100kg which can support 100 tonnes per column and with a restoring rubber diaphragm which returns the building to a centre point.
Inventor and company founder Bill Robinson also developed lead rubber bearings 30 years ago, which are used to protect heavier buildings.
The new device is aimed at a gap in the market for protecting lighter structures for which lead rubber bearings are unsuitable because they need greater weight to move properly.
Two new single story buildings at Wanganui Hospital are the first to be built using RoGliders, which can cost between $1000 and $5000 each.
The devices for the hospital buildings would be able to move up to 45cm in any direction so that the structures could withstand the strongest possible earthquake within that region.
The number of RoGliders needed would generally add about 2 to 3 per cent to the production cost of a building, Wilson said.
The RoGlider would be pitched at global funding agencies and target markets including most of Asia, India, Turkey, Japan and the west coast of the United States.
