. The reliability of structures is affected by various impacts that generally have a negative effect, from extreme weather conditions, due to climate change to natural or man-made hazards. In recent years, extreme loading has had an enormous impact on the resilience of structures as one of the most important characteristics of the sound design of structures, besides the structural integrity and robustness. Resilience can be defined as the ability of the structure to absorb or avoid damage without suffering complete failure, and it can be chosen as the main objective of design, maintenance and restoration for structures and infrastructure. The latter needs further clarification (which is done in this paper), to achieve the clarity of goals compared to robustness which is defined in Eurocode EN 1991-1-7 as: “the ability of a structure to withstand events like fire, explosions, impact or the consequences of human error, without being damaged to an extent disproportionate to the original cause”. Many existing structures are more vulnerable to the natural or man-made hazards due to their material deterioration, and a further decrease of its load-bearing capacity, modifying the structural performance and functionality and, subsequently, the system resilience. Due to currently frequent extreme events, the design philosophy is shifting from Performance-Based Design to Resilience-Based Design and from unit to system (community) resilience. The paper provides an overview of such design evolution with indicative needs for Resilience-Based Design giving few conducted examples.

One of the major causes of ecological and environmental problems comes from the enormous number of discarded waste tires, which is directly connected to the exponential growth of the world’s population. In this paper, previous works carried out on the effects of partial or full replacement of aggregate in concrete with waste rubber on some properties of concrete were investigated. A database containing 457 mixtures with partial or full replacement of natural aggregate with waste rubber in concrete provided by different researchers was formed. This database served as the basis for investigating the influence of partial or full replacement of natural aggregate with waste rubber in concrete on compressive strength. With the aid of the database, the possibility of achieving reliable prediction of the compressive strength of concrete with tire rubber is explored using neural network modelling.

A significant number of old unreinforced load-bearing masonry (URM) buildings exist in many countries worldwide, but especially in Europe. In particular, Bosnia and Herzegovina has an important stock of masonry buildings constructed from the 1920s until the 1960s without application of any seismic code, due to their nonexistence at that time. With the 1963 Skopje earthquake, this class of buildings were shown to be rather vulnerable to seismic actions, which exhibited serious damage. This article assesses the seismic vulnerability of a typical multi-storey residential unreinforced load-bearing masonry building located in the heart of Sarajevo, which may be exposed to an earthquake of magnitude up to 6 by Richter’s scale. The buildings of this kind make up to 6% of the entire housing stock in the urban region of Sarajevo, while in Slovenia this percentage is much higher (around 30%). The analysis of a typical building located in Sarajevo revealed its drawbacks and the need for some kind of strengthening intervention to be implemented. Additionally, many structures of this type are overstressed by one to two additional floors (not the case of the analyzed structure) constructed from 1996 onwards. This was due to the massive population increase in the city center of Sarajevo and further increased the vulnerability of these buildings.

The buildings of architectural and cultural heritage are mostly built with stone or brick wall elements, which are connected using limestone or limestone cement mortar, without a full knowledge of the mechanical properties of masonry structures. The compatibility of heritage masonry buildings with valid technical specifications and the rules for earthquake resistance implies the need for construction work such as repairs, strengthening or reconstruction. By strengthening the masonry buildings, ductility and bearing capacity are increased to a level, which, in the case of the earthquake design, allows for some damage to happen, however the structure retains sufficient usability and bearing capacity without the possibility of collapse. Comparison between traditional and modern techniques for seismic strengthening of masonry buildings is given according to their effects, benefits and disadvantages. Recent Croatian provisions provided for heritage buildings enabling deviation of technical specifications are discussed.

Abstract Bridges can be subjected to damaging environmental actions due to flooding and seismic hazards. Flood actions that result in scour are a leading cause of bridge failure, while seismic actions that induce lateral forces may lead to high ductility demand that exceeds pier capacity. When combined, seismic actions and scour can lead to effects that depend on the governing scour condition affecting a bridge. Loss of stiffness under scour can reduce the ductility capacity of a bridge but can also lead to an increase in flexibility that may reduce seismic inertial forces. Conversely, increased flexibility can lead to deck collapse due to support loss, so there exists some uncertainty about the combined effect of both phenomena. A necessary step towards the performance assessment of bridges under flooding and seismic actions is to calibrate numerical models that can reproduce structural responses under different actions. A further step is verifying the achievement of performance goals defined by codes. Structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques allow the computation of performance parameters that are useful for calibrating numerical models and performing direct checks of performance goal compliance. In this paper, various strategies employed to monitor bridge health against scour and seismic actions are discussed, with a particular focus on vibration-based damage identification methods.