Education Webinar
Rethinking Resilience: Sustainability in Structural Design in High Seismic Regions
September 4, 2025 | Thu 12:00 America/Chicago
Duration: 1.25 Hours
CE Credits: 1.25
$300
The climate emergency compels us, as structural engineers, to fundamentally rethink our design paradigms. While the global push to minimize embodied carbon is reshaping practice, much of this innovation has been developed in non-seismic contexts, often neglecting the essential role of seismic resilience. As we know, focusing solely on carbon reduction without integrating robust seismic performance completely undermines the core objectives of sustainability.
In this presentation, I will detail the process and demonstrate the tangible benefits of adopting physics-consistent Performance-Based Design (PBD) in high seismic regions. This advanced approach enables us to achieve significant reductions in both total project cost and embodied carbon, vastly outperforming what is possible with traditional analysis and design methodologies. Recent award-winning retrofit projects from Wellington, New Zealand, one of the world’s most seismically active cities, will serve as case studies for illustrating these aspects of carbon efficiency and cost effectiveness.
Please Join me as we explore practical pathways for advancing sustainable, resilient and cost-effective designs in earthquake-prone environments, where a “paradigm shift” in design thinking meets today’s urgent climate challenges.
- Course will award 1.25 hour of continuing education
- This course is Diamond Review approved in 49 states. New York does not accept hours from recordings.
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The climate emergency compels us, as structural engineers, to fundamentally rethink our design paradigms. While the global push to minimize embodied carbon is reshaping practice, much of this innovation has been developed in non-seismic contexts, often neglecting the essential role of seismic resilience. As we know, focusing solely on carbon reduction without integrating robust seismic performance completely undermines the core objectives of sustainability.
In this presentation, I will detail the process and demonstrate the tangible benefits of adopting physics-consistent Performance-Based Design (PBD) in high seismic regions. This advanced approach enables us to achieve significant reductions in both total project cost and embodied carbon, vastly outperforming what is possible with traditional analysis and design methodologies. Recent award-winning retrofit projects from Wellington, New Zealand, one of the world’s most seismically active cities, will serve as case studies for illustrating these aspects of carbon efficiency and cost effectiveness.
Please Join me as we explore practical pathways for advancing sustainable, resilient and cost-effective designs in earthquake-prone environments, where a “paradigm shift” in design thinking meets today’s urgent climate challenges.
Speaker:
Arun M. Puthanpurayil, MSc, PhD., is a Beca Technical Fellow in Advanced Seismic and Wind Design, and Technical Director of Structural Dynamics at Beca Ltd., New Zealand. With over 22 years’ experience spanning advanced structural engineering consultancy across New Zealand, the UK, and India, Dr. Puthanpurayil specializes in advanced design solutions for highly specialized structures employing structural control techniques. He has authored more than 35 publications in leading journals and conferences in the field of Earthquake Engineering. He also serves as a key contributing member on the industrial working group developing guidelines for Design using Nonlinear Response History Analysis under the auspices of SESOC (Structural Engineering Society, New Zealand).
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