Earthquakes & Buildings

Earthquakes and buildings

75% of earthquake fatalities are caused by building collapse (Coburn and Spence, 2002). People die or lose their livelihoods in earthquakes because the buildings that they erect to live in and work in fail to resist earthquake motions. Must of the structural damage is caused by S waves.

Aseismic ‘life-safe’ construction

It is possible to build structures and to configure internal layouts to resist earthquake ground motions, which includes these fundamental principles:

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