NextGen Building Systems - S4: Seismically Safer, Sustainable and Smart - Raising the Bar to Enhance Community Resilience and Sustainability

Time for action: after decades of "lessons learnt from previous earthquakes" with severe and unacceptable socio-economic impacts, the remarkable mismatch between societal expectations and actual seismic performance of modern buildings is increasingly evident. A medium-long-term coordinated plan for the seismic retrofit of the existing building stock needs to be urgently implemented to achieve an overdue risk reduction at national scale in most of seismic-prone countries worldwide.When designing new earthquake-resisting building, targeting Life Safety of the occupant is clearly not enough anymore for the general public, who would expect to be provided with an "earthquake-proof" building. A paradigm shift in performance-based design criteria and objective towards damage-control or low-damage design philosophy and technologies is thus urgently required, to say the least. In parallel, and of equal, if no higher, importance, a dedicated effort to improve the communication to the non-technical audience, raise awareness in terms of risk and available solutions and co-create feasible pathways has to become a high-level priority.When dealing with the existing building stock, "Safety first" is the typically agreed top-of-the list priority. Yet, rarely - in "peace time" thus prior to an earthquake event - the desire to improve the seismic safety of a building is the main trigger for rehabilitation/refurbishment interventions.This paper and its associated presentation will provide an overview of recent advances and unique opportunities to enhance the community resilience and sustainability, based on the developments and implementation of either: a) next generation technologies for an integrated (skeleton + non-structural elements) low-damage building systems, moving towards the concept of an "earthquake proof building" and b) unique proactive socio-economic/financial policies to sustain national-wide long-term programs for the integrated seismic-energy efficiency rehabilitation of the whole building stock.