Summary

Structural design and assessment of existing structures should consider extreme events including accidental impacts, gas explosions, fire, flooding and extreme climatic actions. Mostly, failures of structures exposed to the extreme events may hardly be completely prevented. However, consequences of the extreme event in case of sufficiently robust structures may be significantly reduced. Recent structural collapses in the Czech Republic and abroad indicate an urgent need for the development of methods for structural robustness assessment.
The project (2008–2011), based on multilateral collaboration amongst European research institutions involved in the COST Action TU0601, aims to improve the robustness assessment methods using recent scientific findings in the theory of reliability, risk analysis and probabilistic cost optimisation. Available informationcon­cerning response of structures under extreme events is critically reviewed and practical methods for the robustness assessment are developed taking into account conditions in the Czech Republic. Background information for national annexes and revisions of relevant EN Eurocodes will be provided to facilitate practical applications. Dissemination of achieved results will be accomplished through a seminar organised for practical engineers, by papers in professional journals, contributions at conferences and by software packages available on web sites of the project.