ABSTRACT
Recent catastrophic events on urban habitats, including terrorist attacks, have contributed to change the design approach to urban constructions. In fact, nowadays, a correct approach aims at ensuring the satisfactory performances of the structure during its lifetime, considering all the possible critical actions, which the structure could be subjected to, including severe dynamic load conditions. This approach can be considered a sustainable approach for structural design. It aims at guaranteeing not only the structural performances of the urban constructions, but also the social sustainability of the urban habitat, which is requested to be able to withstand catastrophic events, without causing catastrophic consequences. Hence, designers of urban facilities and infrastructures need to be aware of all the possible events that could act on the structures during their life-time, including catastrophic events. Malicious disruptions, blasts, or impacts have unfortunately become part of the possible scenarios that could occur on constructed facilities.
