Guides
Start here
Watching the ground move
How the Central Weather Administration measures earthquakes and sends alerts before the shaking arrives.
02 · TyphoonsReading a typhoon warning
How typhoons are tracked and warned about, and what a forecast probability really means.
03 · Taipei 101 DamperA pendulum in a skyscraper
How a huge steel mass helps a 508-metre tower stay calm in strong winds.
04 · Academia SinicaTaiwan’s national academy
From Nanjing in 1928 to Nankang in Taipei: the history and the Earth and space institutes.
Science profile
What Taipei is known for in science
Taipei is home to Taiwan’s national academy, National Taiwan University and the agency that watches the island’s weather and seismic activity. Four threads run through this site.
- Seismology and early warningThe Central Weather Administration monitors earthquakes around Taiwan and sends strong-motion alerts before the shaking arrives in cities further from the epicentre.
- Typhoon forecastingThe same agency tracks typhoons and issues the official warnings, with probabilities that show how certain a forecast is.
- Building for wind and shakingTaipei 101 was designed for a city with typhoons and earthquakes and carries a tuned mass damper near its top.
- Earth sciences and astronomyAcademia Sinica, founded in 1928, runs institutes for Earth sciences and for astronomy and astrophysics.
On the Atlas
The Platform’s hub in Asia
science.Taipei is the TheScience.fm Platform’s hub in Asia and its only science.city address: a site written from a local perspective, for people who live in Taipei and for everyone curious about it. None of the Atlas routes passes through Taipei; the city stands on the Atlas map on its own.
A TheScience.fm podcast
nauka.news
Science news explained without hype, including earthquakes, weather and the research behind the headlines.
Audio in Polish, with English subtitles and automatic English dubbing on YouTube.Taipei
Taipei, the place
The city in a basin between rivers and volcanic hills: its geography, its institutions, public science events and the places where visitors can see science for themselves.
City & Region
Taipei, a city of 2.44 million in a basin under the Datun volcanoes: its history from Qing prefecture to special municipality, its science and how to get there.
Institutes & Facilities
Universities and research centres in Taipei: Academia Sinica, NTU, NTNU, Taiwan Tech, Taipei Tech, NYCU, TMU, NCCU and others, research hospitals and the CWA.
Conferences & Events
Recurring science events in Taipei: Academia Sinica’s Open House in October, the Taiwan Science Festival in autumn, COMPUTEX in May or June, sky-watching and lectures.
Science Travel
Science to visit in Taipei: the science centre, astronomy museum, Taipei 101’s damper, university museums, botanical garden, Yangmingshan and Beitou.
Contact
Contact science.Taipei, part of the TheScience.fm Platform.
Articles
Read next
Can you do a PhD at Academia Sinica? How the TIGP programme works
Yes, through the Taiwan International Graduate Program (TIGP). Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s national academy, runs doctoral programmes together with partner universities: students do their research in the academy’s institutes and receive their diploma from the partner university.
Why does Taiwan have so many earthquakes?
Taiwan shakes often because it sits on a collision: one tectonic plate is being pushed into another at about eight centimetres a year, and the island itself is the crumple zone.
The 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake: what happened and what it changed
In the early hours of 21 September 1999, the Chelungpu fault in central Taiwan ruptured along about 100 kilometres. The Chi-Chi earthquake killed thousands, damaged buildings as far away as Taipei and left seismologists with the richest set of strong-motion records ever gathered from a major earthquake.
Glossary