Croatian Center for Earthquake Engineering

At the beginning of 2021, a new scientific research branch of the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the University of Zagreb was officially established under the name Croatian Center for Earthquake Engineering (HCPI). The proposal for its establishment was strongly supported by the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction, and State Property, and approved by the Ministry of Science and Education, which is the main source of funding for research projects and other activities within the Branch.

In order to provide basic information to field experts during rapid assessments and to gather all knowledge and experiences of scientists and experts in the field of earthquake engineering in one place, an unofficial digital platform called "Croatian Center for Earthquake Engineering" (www.HCPI.hr) was established a few days after the earthquake in Zagreb in 2020. This platform led to the establishment of a research center for earthquake engineering and emergency services aimed at providing intervention services and assistance after earthquakes.

For many years, there had been attempts to emphasize the need for establishing a center for earthquake engineering, but it was only recognized after the destructive earthquakes that struck the Zagreb area on March 22, 2020, and the Sisak-Moslavina County area on December 28 and 29, 2020. Faculty staff participated in all activities aimed at mitigating the consequences of earthquakes and providing advice and assistance in the reconstruction and recovery of affected areas and communities. Their activities included organizing and conducting rapid assessments of earthquake-damaged buildings, developing methodologies and digital platforms for assessing damage and usability of buildings, providing on-site training and education for engineers, publishing manuals, forming multidisciplinary working groups for reconstruction planning, and preparing proposals for regulations for the reconstruction of earthquake-damaged buildings, collaborating with the World Bank on damage assessment, and estimating reconstruction costs for the Croatian government and other initiatives.

The branch of the Croatian Center for Earthquake Engineering consists of 20 members of the Council (assistant professors, associate professors, and full professors), one postdoctoral researcher, one assistant, and four project collaborators, including three doctoral students.

The HCPI collaborates with numerous scientific researchers from other departments of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, as well as from other faculties in the Republic of Croatia, and a variety of universities and institutes in Europe and worldwide. Team members are researchers in the field of earthquake engineering and seismic risk assessment and have participated in various research projects and published numerous scientific and professional papers in internationally recognized journals. The group actively collaborates with national and regional organizations and bodies, such as the Croatian Chamber of Civil Engineers, the Ministry of Science and Education, the Ministry of the Interior - Directorate of Civil Protection, the Croatian Association for Earthquake Engineering, and various international foundations and organizations such as the Global Earthquake Model Foundation (GEM) and the World Bank.

In order to achieve its main goal, which is to mitigate earthquake risk to the community in the Republic of Croatia, the branch has defined fundamental activities. These activities are carried out within eight scientific projects within the HCPI and cover various fields in the field of earthquake engineering, such as: monitoring the condition of structures, developing software packages and guidelines for out-of-plane mechanism calculations according to Eurocode 1998-3, developing tools for training engineers for effective and rapid assessment of building structure damage using virtual reality (VR), calculating structures and seismic vulnerability of buildings in a series, taking into account the effect of neighboring building collisions, preliminary and rapid calculation of seismic resistance of existing structures using visual programming, damage assessment using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), developing an improved digital form for visual assessment of building damage considering past earthquake experiences, developing a form for assessing bridge damage, and assessing seismic risk to buildings in the education sector in the Republic of Croatia.