Guest editorial: Structural seismic safety assessment

Abstract

Experience and research developments have led to significant advances in the subject of seismic engineering over the past 40years. In the particular field of seismic design, the development of a new generation of design codes such as the Eurocode 8 is an importantmilestone. Although this code still promotes the use of classical seismic design approaches deeply imbedded in current practice, e.g. force-based approaches considering the use of behaviour factors (q-factors) and enforcing capacity design principles, Eurocode 8 also encourages the use of more advanced methods of analysis. Although the core of such analysis methods, i.e. nonlinear static andnonlinear dynamic analysismethods, can be seen to be reasonablywell established, there are other issues of the design process which must be addressed. Namely, an adequate safety format, similar in scope to the one involving linear analysis methods, is yet to be explicitly addressed in a framework which foresees the use of nonlinear analysis methods. In an attempt to address some of the issues related to seismic safety in the context of Eurocode 8, a special theme session on “Seismic Safety Assessment” was held during the 7th National Conference on Seismology and Seismic Engineering—Sismica 2007, which took place in Porto, Portugal, on September 26–28, 2007. This Special Issue of the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering collects improved versions of some of the papers presented at that special theme session covering subjects such as the definition of the seismic action,