Seismic sustainability

Seismic sustainability ( also called Seismic fitness) stands for ability of buildings or civil engineering structures to perform their basic operational functions with seismic risk limited to acceptable level. Seismic sustainability may be considered the paramount goal of earthquake engineering which is concerned with protecting society, the natural and the man-made environment from the earthquake hazards.



For any particular structural object and earth shaking intensity, seismic sustainability is not universal. It depends on a particular type of challenge: e.g., the soil conditions, 3-D directions of shaking, possibility of tsunami and its magnitude, etc.

A seismically sustainable structure does not necessarily have to be extremely strong or expensive. It just has to withstand predetermined seismic impacts while sustaining an acceptable level of damage.

The most powerful and budgetary tools for upgrading seismic sustainability of buildings and structures are vibration control technologies and, in particular, base isolation.