City & Region

In a nutshell

According to the Taipei City Government, the Taipei Basin was formed by fault displacement and later shaped by river erosion. The Danshui (Tamsui), Xindian and Keelung Rivers run through it. In the north of the city rise the Datun volcanoes, most of which lie within Yangmingshan National Park.

The city covers about 272 square kilometres and is divided into 12 districts, among them Nangang, home to Academia Sinica, Xinyi, home to Taipei 101, and Shilin, home to the science centre and the astronomy museum described on Science Travel.

A city on soft ground

A basin filled with river sediments is not a uniform foundation. Seismologists studying Taipei 101 note that the sediments of the Taipei Basin thicken towards the north-west and that the tower stands near the basin’s eastern margin. They also point out that long-period ground motion from large earthquakes is a main cause of seismic damage to high-rise buildings, which is why the way the basin shakes matters for a city of tall buildings.

Instruments in the city help to measure this. Taipei 101 has its own seismic array, from the fifth basement level to the 90th floor, and its records are compared with a borehole station about 500 metres away whose sensor sits 100 metres underground. How the CWA’s wider network works is explained on Watching the ground move.

Volcanoes on the city’s edge

The hills of the Datun (Tatun) group are watched by scientists: the Central Weather Administration’s seismological timeline records the founding of the Taiwan Volcano Observatory-Tatun on 17 October 2011, and routine monitoring of volcanic seismicity there began in 2013. Some of its broadband stations send data to the CWA in real time.

The observatory works with Academia Sinica’s Institute of Earth Sciences; in 2019 they jointly organised a workshop where volcanologists from across Asia shared their experience of volcano monitoring and hazard reduction.

Under typhoon skies

Taipei also lives with the weather of the western North Pacific. According to the CWA, around 3 to 5 typhoons a year affect the vicinity of Taiwan. When one approaches, the CWA issues sea and land warnings and publishes probabilities of strong winds for major cities and islands. The details are on Reading a typhoon warning.

Science profile

Taipei’s science on this site follows the themes of the city’s daily life: earthquakes and typhoons, the engineering that copes with them and the national academy that studies the Earth and the sky. The four guides fit together: the earthquake and typhoon guides explain how hazards are measured and warned about, the Taipei 101 guide shows how one building responds to them, and the Academia Sinica guide introduces the researchers who study them. The institutions are described on Institutes & Facilities.

On the Atlas

science.Taipei is the Platform’s hub in Asia and its only science.city address, written from a local perspective. None of the Atlas routes passes through Taipei, so the city appears on the world map of all hubs below. The routes link the other hubs.