Structural Robustness and Resilient Infrastructure against Extreme Hazards 2025

Civil engineering structures are increasingly subjected to extreme hazards, which are not usually considered in structural design and assessment. On one hand, such hazards have a very low probability of occurrence, and on the other, they are expected to produce huge consequences on people and property. Extreme events include but are not limited to natural events (e.g. landslides, floods, hurricanes), technological events (e.g. impact, fires, explosions), man-made events (e.g. malicious actions, human errors in design, construction or maintenance), deterioration phenomena (e.g. steel corrosion, concrete carbonation), and cascade events (e.g. natural-technological events). Climate change and strong urbanization in some areas have further exacerbated the occurrence of extreme hazards and their impact. This has significantly increased the awareness of governments and standardization bodies to develop guidelines for collapse prevention and provisions in national and international structural codes.

The SARAH Summer School aims at providing fundamentals of structural robustness, large-displacement inelastic response of structures, disaster risk and resilience of structures and infrastructures, as well as methods for structural design, assessment and retrofitting against extreme hazards.