COST Action C26: Urban habitat constructions under catastrophic events

This COST Action C26 deals with the outstanding topic of the protection of constructions in urban areas from exceptional loads, such as earthquakes, fire, wind, impact, explosions and so on. Buildings in urban habitat are designed, in fact, according to rules aimed at ensuring an adequate structural safety level under “normal” loading conditions. Nevertheless, all structures can be exposed to certain extreme conditions arising out of predictable natural or man-made hazards. These include earthquakes in non-seismic areas, unforeseen fire, exceptional wind storms, heavy snow loading, gas explosions, accidental and/or incidental impact from projectiles or vehicles out of control, and explosions due to bomb blasts during terrorist attacks. The present Action aims to establish towards an improved understanding of the response of constructions to such extreme conditions, in order to ensure a given adequate safety level.

The main objective of the Action is to establish a co-operation between European scientists and engineers in order to increase the knowledge of the behaviour of constructions when exposed to above extreme actions and to predict their response when both the applied loading and the inherent structural resistance are combined in such a way to reduce the safety level below acceptable values, leading in some cases to a premature collapse.

This objective is realized through 4 technical Working Groups, namely: Fire resistance (WG 1), Earthquake resistance (WG 2), Impact and explosion resistance (WG3), Resistance to Infrequent Loading Conditions (WG 4). The four WGs act on the basis of a common methodology, facing the “Assessment of Degradation and Damage”, the “Modelling” and the “Structural analysis”.