Seismic risk mitigation - the basis of a sustainable development

The notion of seismic risk is employed to describe the effects of earthquakes on social, economic and environmental aspects over a certain period of time and can be defined as the interaction of three parameters: seismic hazard, exposure time and structure vulnerability. A high seismic risk does not involve a high seismic hazard and vice versa. Disaster risk management is quantified by the application of appropriate policies and strategies necessary to prevent and reduce the risk, manage residual risk, thereby enhancing the resilience of the system. There are two strategic ways to reduce seismic risk: the improvement of emergency response and the adequate design of structures. Prevention is the most cost-effective solution and can play even the role of a driver for economic growth, and it is granted more attention in the disaster management cycle. Performance based seismic design involves the development of safety criteria in which the hazard is determined probabilistically as a function of the potential consequences of failure. Even if earthquakes cannot be accurately predicted, the disastrous consequences produced by human loss, economic and social damage can be minimized. In this paper, models of seismic risk mitigation programs for Turkey, Greece and Romania are presented.