Ricerc@Sapienza

Targeting life-safety is arguably not enough for our modern society and communities. The performance-based design objectives need a paradigm shift towards a low-damage design philosophy with the final goal of developing a cost-affordable high-performance building system, including structural and non-structural elements, services and soil foundation systems, capable of sustaining a design level earthquake with limited damage, controllable socio-economic losses and minimum disruption of business.

Lessons from recent earthquakes have provided a tough reality check of the current seismic design approach,
highlighting a critical mismatch between societal expectations over the reality of seismic performance of modern
buildings. The performance-based design criteria and objectives need a paradigm shift towards low-damage design
philosophy and technologies that should The project provided the opportunity to coordinate a unique research effort for
the development and possible future implementation in the European Environment of an integrated low-damage

Innovative damage-mitigation technologies have been recently developed to improve the seismic performance of structural and non-structural elements. The combination of these solutions can lead to a high-performance and cost-efficient building system, capable of sustaining earthquakes with limited damage and reduced socio-economic losses.