Books in the NATO Science Series IV: Earth series

This book will appeal to specialist engineers with enquiring minds and, in a broader sense, to all who live in buildings, especially those in a seismically active region. While the continual development of building codes permits the design of new construction to resist earthquake loads more effectively, a major problem is that buildings which may once have conformed to past seismic codes become structurally unacceptable according to today's codes and need upgrading or `retrofitting'. Poor construction methods also result in buildings that do not conform to any codes. Existing `vulnerable' buildings that require strengthening in earthquake-prone countries immensely outnumber all recent construction.