ABSTRACT
The purpose of the Millennium Symposium was to bring together leading international researchers in earthquake hazard mitigation to present their work and to assess the current status of the field. The 1995 Kobe earthquake and the 1999 earthquakes in Turkey and Taiwan have further highlighted the damaging effects of near-fault ground motion and associated permanent fault displacements on urban infrastructure. Technological advances often push a new technology into the earthquake engineering field, with researchers identifying applications appropriate for the technology. The damaging earthquakes attacking Los Angeles, Kobe, Taichung, and Kocaeli have dramatically shown the need to understand near-fault earthquake motions in a fundamental way. Multi-lateral research is urgently needed in all affected countries to focus on the specific characteristics of earthquakes and how they damage the built environment. A cooperative research agenda on infrastructure design for ground motions in urban regions should include the following components.
