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    00 EC8-ReLUIS Foreword

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    Jordan Bojadziev
    This document summarizes two significant events that affected the Italian earthquake engineering community in recent years: 1) Italy adopted a new seismic code comparable to international standards, and 2) ReLUIS, a consortium of universities researching earthquake engineering, was established with €15 billion in funding. The new seismic code benefited from research conducted by ReLUIS. Experts involved with both the code and ReLUIS ensured information was shared between the two efforts. ReLUIS conducted extensive experimental testing across Italy. The results of ReLUIS's work are represented in the new seismic code as well as advances in understanding seismic risk and innovative approaches to risk reduction.

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    00 EC8-ReLUIS Foreword

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    Jordan Bojadziev
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    This document summarizes two significant events that affected the Italian earthquake engineering community in recent years: 1) Italy adopted a new seismic code comparable to international standards, and 2) ReLUIS, a consortium of universities researching earthquake engineering, was established with €15 billion in funding. The new seismic code benefited from research conducted by ReLUIS. Experts involved with both the code and ReLUIS ensured information was shared between the two efforts. ReLUIS conducted extensive experimental testing across Italy. The results of ReLUIS's work are represented in the new seismic code as well as advances in understanding seismic risk and innovative approaches to risk reduction.

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    Foreword

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    00_EC8-ReLUIS_Foreword

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    This document summarizes two significant events that affected the Italian earthquake engineering community in recent years: 1) Italy adopted a new seismic code comparable to international standards, and 2) ReLUIS, a consortium of universities researching earthquake engineering, was established with €15 billion in funding. The new seismic code benefited from research conducted by ReLUIS. Experts involved with both the code and ReLUIS ensured information was shared between the two efforts. ReLUIS conducted extensive experimental testing across Italy. The results of ReLUIS's work are represented in the new seismic code as well as advances in understanding seismic risk and innovative approaches to risk reduction.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    10 views2 pages

    00 EC8-ReLUIS Foreword

    Uploaded by

    Jordan Bojadziev
    This document summarizes two significant events that affected the Italian earthquake engineering community in recent years: 1) Italy adopted a new seismic code comparable to international standards, and 2) ReLUIS, a consortium of universities researching earthquake engineering, was established with €15 billion in funding. The new seismic code benefited from research conducted by ReLUIS. Experts involved with both the code and ReLUIS ensured information was shared between the two efforts. ReLUIS conducted extensive experimental testing across Italy. The results of ReLUIS's work are represented in the new seismic code as well as advances in understanding seismic risk and innovative approaches to risk reduction.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 2

    FOREWORD

    Naples, Italy – July 2009

    Two non independent events significantly affected Italian earthquake engineering community
    in the last few years. First of all the Italian code was superseded by one comparable, for
    quality and technical content, to the last generation of seismic codes at international level.
    Second, the ReLUIS (Rete dei Laboratori Universitari di Ingegneria Sismica, http://www.reluis.it)
    consortium, networking the institutions with the largest facilities, both experimental and
    numerical, for earthquake engineering research, was born. ReLUIS was founded by the Italian
    Department of Civil Protection (DPC) via a 15 billion of Euros project developed between
    2005 and 2008; the largest project in earthquake engineering ever in Italy for both funding
    and number of researchers involved, about six hundreds.

    Needless to say, the new Italian code is based on Eurocodes, still it has benefitted of some
    state-of-the-art advances brought in the community by the ReLUIS project, which actually
    had as one of the main purposes the development of the seismic code. I had the opportunity of
    following such a process from a close standpoint as a past president of the consortium, and
    personally think this proximity with alive and active research was successful and visible in the
    code. This is especially true with respect to those aspects related to assessment and retrofit of
    existing, both reinforced concrete and masonry, structures (it is to recall that existing
    buildings are certainly the largest issue regarding structures in Italy which has the most of
    seismic risk carried by these type of constructions), but also for what concerns geotechnical
    earthquake engineering, and finally seismic actions on structures. This latter goal, could have
    not been achieved without the advanced probabilistic seismic hazard analysis provided by
    INGV (Instituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia) and DPC, which is now available for
    the whole national territory allowing to determine design seismic actions on a rational basis,
    yet manageable by practitioners.

    The osmosis between the two processes is even clearer if one thinks that two consecutive
    ReLUIS chairs, I and Mauro Dolce, were also in the new seismic code committee. Conversely,
    the ReLUIS research was stimulated by many code-based issues.

    On the other hand, earthquake engineering research itself not only developed results to be
    taken in by the new code, but also performed large experimental tests distributed all over the
    country still non-overlapping and coordinated at national level. The amount and quality of
    experimental data gathered within the ReLUIS project is something unseen before, probably
    not only for Italy.

    The results are not only represented by the new code, which was enforced on July 1st 2009,
    but also by the step ahead of earthquake engineering as a whole, ranging from the mentioned
    improvement in understanding of seismic risk of existing structures to new design paradigms
    and innovative approaches to seismic risk reduction as well as emergency management,
    directly employed in the recent L’Aquila earthquake in which ReLUIS was side-to-side with
    DPC acting as one of its centers of competency.
    VIII Foreword

    It is my belief that part of the advances implemented in the code and supported by consistent
    research, may be useful for the developments of Eurocodes, and this motivated the
    publications of the proceedings of the workshop giving the title to this book, which is divided
    in chapters reflecting the Eurocode 8 structure: i.e., Ground Conditions and Seismic Action,
    Concrete Buildings, Steel and Concrete Composite Structures, Masonry Buildings.

    I finally can’t skip to thank those enthusiastically participating to all of this, Gaetano
    Manfredi current president of ReLUIS who managed to integrate the workshop at the end of
    the final meeting of the ReLUIS project where the main results were presented, and Iunio
    Iervolino who has helped in organizing the workshop and the proceedings.

    Edoardo Cosenza

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