AbstractNew construction technologies are evolving in the market faster than codes for earthquake‐resistant building design. Earthquake‐resistant design of nearly zero‐energy buildings that are constructed throughout Europe and thermally insulated system below the foundation is not yet supported by the codes. However, major earthquakes can cause the sliding of these buildings and damage lifelines, potentially triggering domino effects such as fire or explosions. To address this issue, a numerical framework to evaluate the risk‐targeted engineering demand parameter is introduced and applied to establish a database of risk‐targeted sliding displacements in Slovenia for low‐rise buildings with a specific type of thermally insulated system below foundation pads. The database of risk‐targeted sliding displacement accounts for seismic hazard at the location of the building, the soil type, the thermally insulated foundation pad system variant, and the characteristics of the structure above the thermal insulation layers. The database of the risk‐targeted sliding displacement was then used to introduce a code‐based verification model to design the diameter of the penetration in the structure of low‐rise buildings, with the aim of preventing the failure of hazardous lifelines entering the building. Engineering practitioners can easily apply this simple verification model to design the diameter of the penetrations. However, the model shows that the maximum sliding displacement corresponding to the annual target risk of 2·10−4 is expected to be only about 4 cm for the thermally base‐insulated low‐rise buildings in Slovenia investigated in this study.