The Eurocodes Balkan Summer School 2021: Sharing Knowledge To Enhance Seismic Resilience

Due to the high seismicity of the Balkan region, most non-EU countries in the Balkan region are close to formally adopt or have already adopted the European standard EN 1998 “Eurocode 8: Design of structures for earthquake resistance”. This European standard provides the principles for the design of structures for earthquake resistance, being part of the Eurocodes suite (EN 1990- EN 1999).

To enable technical support in the topic, JRC organized the first edition of the JRC Eurocodes Balkan Summer School on the seismic design of concrete buildings from 5 to 16 July 2021. The main objective of the Eurocodes Balkan Summer School was to assist the training of practitioners (design engineers) in the use of the Eurocodes in their day-to-day design practice. The Summer School scientific programme consisted of ten half-day sessions of a highly engaging and interactive programme including keynote lectures and lectures with worked examples by the Eurocodes’ drafters, group work on assignments under expert supervision, and an interactive classroom “talk with the expert”. Interaction between younger and senior engineers of the region gave additional value to the School. The high level of participant’s satisfaction is a strong indicator of the Summer School’s positive impact. It opens possibilities for similar events in the future and the transformation of the developed training materials into an e-Learning course.