Earthquake engineering structures are those engineered to withstand various types of hazardous earthquake exposures at the sites of their particular location.
Earthquake-proof and massive pyramid El Castillo, Chichen Itza
Earthquake engineering is treating its subject structures like defensive fortifications in military engineering but for the warfare on earthquakes. Both earthquake and military general design principles are similar: be ready to slow down or mitigate the advance of a possible attacker.
The main objectives of earthquake engineering are:
Snapshot from shake-table video [1] of testing base-isolated (right) and regular (left) building model
* Understand interaction of structures with the shaky ground.
* Foresee the consequences of possible earthquakes.
* Design and construct the structures to [[seismic performance|perform while being exposed to an earthquake.
Earthquake engineering or earthquake-proof structure does not, necessarily, means extremely strong and expensive one like El Castillo pyramid at Chichen Itza shown above.
Now, the most powerful and budgetary tool of the earthquake engineering is base isolation which pertains to the passive structural vibration control technologies.