Urban Habitat Constructions under Catastrophic Events: The COST C26 Action

The main objective of the international research project (COST C26 Action, Chairman F.M. Mazzolani) dealing with “Urban Habitat Constructions under Catastrophic Events” (2006 – 2010) was to increase the knowledge on the behaviour of constructions located in urban habitat and subjected to both natural and/or man-made catastrophic events, such as earthquakes, fire, wind storms, heavy snow loading, gas explosions, accidental impact from vehicles out of control and occasionally due to bomb blasts during terrorist attacks. In this view, it has been planned to define suitable tools for predicting the ultimate response of such constructions under extreme conditions, occurring when both loading and structural resistance are combined in such a way to reduce the safety level below acceptable values. In addition, the preparation of ad-hoc guidelines for damage prevention as well as for repairing of constructions hit by the above situations is planned. Twenty-three European Countries are participating in this project (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom). The final Conference was held in Naples on 16 to 19 September 2010 with the participation of additional twenty-three oversee Countries, where the out-put of the project has been presented. A synthetic overview of the main achieved results is given in this paper.