Lessons from the Northridge and Kobe earthquakes

The occurrence, a year apart, of these two earthquakes in regions (California and Japan) considered to be the cradles of modern earthquake engineering, is of exceptional interest. The very large number and diversity of buildings that were severely shaken, the identification of new pathologies, the fact that most of the buildings and structures were designed according to earthquake-resistant standards, and the multiplicity of recordings obtained are circumstances that rarely come together. As a result, each of these earthquakes has provided a huge database from which research activities, the validation of analysis methods and the fine-tuning of regulations should benefit greatly.

It is also interesting to compare these...