THE EUROCODE 8-PART 3: THE NEW EUROPEAN CODE FOR THE SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF EXISTING STRUCTURES

There is a growing worldwide perception that the built environment, both historic and of recent construction, is characterised by an unacceptably high level of seismic risk. Given the technical, economical and social problems involved, mitigation of this risk cannot be but a long-term objective, whose achievement requires the availability of efficient normative documents allowing for rational and cost-effective interventions. The paper illustrates the main features of a recently released European code (Eurocode 8 Part 3) devoted to the subject. The document is aligned with the present international trend of explicitly staling and pursuing the sought performances, but contains also elements of novelty. These latter regard essentially the introduction of so-called "levels of knowledge", as a factor for deciding type of analysis and use of newly defined confidence factors in member verification, plus a set of entirely new capacity expressions for the ultimate and damage states of the members.