Preface
This book is intended to help professionals of a wide range of disciplines in their
attempts to reduce the social and economic risks of earthquakes. Earthquake risk reduction
involves so many issues in planning, design, regulation, quality control and finance,
that it is difficult for any individual to gain a full perspective on the issue, or for any
society to move forward in the quest at the desired speed.
The principal objectives are to:
• discuss the chief aspects of earthquake risk and their evaluation;
• present methods of reducing or managing a range of earthquake risks;
• give guidance on topics where no generally accepted method is currently available;
• suggest procedures to be adopted in earthquake regions having no official zoning
or lateral force regulations; and
• indicate some of the more important specialist literature.
The general principles of this book apply to the whole built environment, while the
more detailed sections relate to selected aspects of it. Whereas an attempt has been
made to provide guidance on most of the more important issues, the coverage cannot
be exhaustive in a single book.
The author published the predecessor to this book, under the title Earthquake Resistant
Design, in 1987. In the 15 years or so since then, much progress has been made in
understanding earthquakes and in how to build more safely. In some areas of study great
developments have occurred, such as in seismotectonics, hazard analysis, and design
earthquakes, and microcomputers for everyone, and there has been wider recognition
of the importance of structural form. However, one of the great difficulties for the
designers of earthquake resistant property arises simply from the enormous volume
of literature being produced on each of the many specialisms within the overall subject
area. Hopefully, this book will help some of us to find our way better through
this maze.
This book was written from the standpoint of a designer trying to keep a broad
perspective on the total process, starting from the nature of the loading through to the
details of construction. To this end, the successful overall format of my previous book
has largely been retained, with some reorganization and the introduction of some new
topics in line with the change of title to Earthquake Risk Reduction. I have attempted
to give the book as international a flavour as possible, although I have inevitably drawn
more heavily on information from the literature that I know best To reduce earthquake risk worldwide our greatest needs are (1) retrofitting of much
existing infrastructure, (2) to develop a new generation of low damage infrastructure,
(3) to avoid building in high hazard zones, (4) to improve quality control of construction,
(5) to improve collaboration between engineers and architects, and (6) develop
simpler methods of analysis and detailing rules

Earthquake Risk Reduction