The Bled workshops have traditionally produced reference documents providing visions for the future development of earthquake engineering as foreseen by leading researchers in the field. The participants of the 2011 workshop built on the tradition of these events initiated by Professors Fajfar and Krawinkler to honor their important research contributions and have now produced a book providing answers to crucial questions in today’s earthquake engineering: “What visible changes in the design practice have been brought about by performance-based seismic engineering? What are the critical needs for future advances? What actions should be taken to respond to those needs?” The key answer is that research interests should go beyond the narrow technical aspects and that the seismic resilience of society as a whole should become an essential part of the planning and design process.
The book aims to provide essential guidelines for researchers, professionals and students in the field of earthquake engineering. It will also be of particular interest for all those working at insurance companies, governmental, civil protection and emergency management agencies that are responsible for assessing and planning community resilience.
The introductory chapter of the book is based on the keynote presentation given at the workshop by the late Professor Helmut Krawinkler. As such, the book includes Helmut’s last and priceless address to the engineering community, together with his vision and advice for the future development of performance-based design, earthquake engineering and seismic risk management.
Matej Fischinger (born in 1954) is a Professor of Earthquake Engineering and Reinforced Concrete Structures at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. He is a Member of the Slovenian Academic Society of Technical and Natural Sciences and the Vice-president of the Slovenian Association for Earthquake Engineering.
His research has been concerned with earthquake resistant design of RC structures and the inelastic design procedures. He is the co-author of the N2 method, proposed in 1989 in his Ph.D. dissertation supervised by Professor Fajfar. For the related research work they got the highest research award in the Republic of Slovenia. Since then the N2 method, which was recently incorporated into Eurocode 8, has become one of the leading push-over methods in earthquake engineering.His current interest is in the seismic resistance of bridges, RC industrial buildings and structural walls, performance-based design methodologies, the Eurocode, and the use of information technology in education. Using inelastic macro-models the research group led by Matej Fischinger made several successful benchmark predictions of the response of RC structural walls.
As a designer, consultant or reviewer, he has participated in many design projects (in particular of high-rise apartment buildings, bridges, industrial buildings, precast buildings, NPP Kr ko and related buildings). He has been very active in the development of the EC8 and its introduction as a National code in Slovenia. Slovenia was the first country to adopt Eurocodes as the national code on January 1, 2008. He wrote the commentary for the RC section. He has actively participated in the recent modifications of the design rules for prefabricated structures in EC8. These results are based on extensive research within several EU research projects, where Matej Fischinger served as the Slovenian co-ordinator."
