Resilience-based design (RBD) modelling of civil infrastructure to assess seismic hazards

The chapter addresses a new design methodology for civil engineering structures called 'resilience-based design (RBD)', which can be considered as the next generation of performance-based design (PBD). Currently, engineers approach a structure as if it stands alone, without considering the interaction with the community. However, instead it should be considered as an integrated part of the design process. Indeed, the building should not be considered alone, but as a group of buildings using the 'portfolio approach' which would allow regional loss analysis. The goal of RBD is to make communities as 'resilient' as possible, developing technologies and actions that allows each structure and/or community to regain its function as promptly as possible. The fundamental concepts of community resilience are analysed and a common reference framework based on the acronyms called 'PEOPLES' is established. Emphasis is given to hazard intensity measures, engineering demand parameters, while a new performance matrix is proposed to define the performance limit thresholds for RBD. Some applications are presented incorporating both performance and resilience objectives in order to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed method.