Seismic Risk Reduction in Developing Countries

Poor populations often live and work in informally constructed buildings, which are highly vulnerable to hazards such as earthquakes, hurricanes and flooding. According to a recent study of the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction & Recovery (World Bank), most of these populations will experience a doubling of their building stocks in the next 15‐20 years. It is crucial that these new constructions will contribute to higher safety and to lower risks. With the adoption of The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction there is a clear priority in assessing the earthquake hazard, develop new or improved construction techniques as well as building codes and standards for developing countries. To reach such challenging objectives specific focuses, which extend the fields of research well beyond the “traditional” areas of expertise of seismic engineering, are required.

To address the scope and to provide a well-documented reference in this field, authors are welcome to submit their recent research results to this Research Topic. Suitable article themes include, but are not limited to, the following:

• seismic hazard assessment in fragile areas,
• seismic response of traditional/historical non and semi-engineered constructions,
• seismic response of non and semi-engineered constructions,
• affordable emerging technologies,
• technologies easily implementable by poor and vulnerable,
• exploit of local resources and materials,
• seismic instructions for non and semi-engineered constructions,
• seismic regulations and policies,
• development, implementation and enforcement of building codes aware of local socio economic and development contexts,
• seismic architecture,
• design of earthquake resistant structures and foundations,
• experimental, analytical and computational methods,
• seismic loss assessment,
• seismic risk mitigation,
• disaster risk management,
• post-earthquake reconnaissance.