Tectonic hazards/Seismic design

Seismic design rests on authorized engineering procedures, principles and criteria meant to design or retrofit structures subject to earthquake exposure. Those criteria are barely consistent with the contemporary state of the knowledge about building structures .Therefore, the fact that a building design blindly follows some seismic code regulations does not guarantee safety against collapse or serious damage.

The price of poor seismic design may be enormous. Nevertheless, seismic design has always been a trial and error process no matter it was based upon physical laws or empirical knowledge.

To practice seismic design, seismic analysis or seismic evaluation of new and existing civil engineering projects in California, by the way, an engineer should, normally, pass examination on Seismic Principles.