Recent events in Venezuela and Colombia leave a fundamental lesson: we cannot prevent earthquakes, but excellent structural design makes all the difference.

In this interview, engineer Alejandro Muñoz Peláez, founding partner of PRISMA and chair of the E.030 Seismic Design Standard committee, examines today’s challenges in the face of seismic vulnerability and the critical need to conceive projects with the real behavior of buildings in mind.

If your project is at an early stage, now is the best time to evaluate alternatives such as seismic isolation or energy dissipation.