Structural control has been comprehensively studied over the world as a multidisciplinary research field. The present work is motivated by an attempt to give a common frame to the recent research and applications of structural control technology in civil engineering across Europe. They include novel passive dampers, functional materials and semi‐active dampers, active control systems, and their performance investigations. Design methods for the vibrations reduction of buildings, bridges, and wind turbines are discussed with reference to case studies. Control algorithms and dimension reduction techniques are also studied. Adaptation strategies and techniques based on the potential offered by piezoelectricity are reviewed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Data from 15 earthquakes that occurred in 12 different countries are presented showing that, without better drift control, structures built with building codes allowing large seismic drifts are likely to keep leaving a wide wake of damage ranging from cracked partitions to building overturning. Following the earthquake sequence affecting southeast Turkey in 2023, a team led by Committee 133 of the American Concrete Institute surveyed nearly 250 reinforced concrete buildings in the area extending from Antakya to Malatya. Buildings ranging from 2 to 16 stories were surveyed to assess their damage and evaluate the robustness of their structures in relation to overall stiffness, as measured by the relative cross‐sectional areas of structural walls and columns. The majority of the buildings were estimated to have been built in the past 10 years. Yet, the structures surveyed were observed to have amounts of structural walls and columns comparable with amounts reported after the Erzincan (1992), Duzce (1999), and Bingol (2003) Earthquakes in Turkey. These amounts are, on average, much smaller than the wall and column amounts used in Chile and Japan. Because of that lack of robustness and given the intensities of the motions reported from Antakya to Malatya (with 10 stations with peak ground velocity (PGV) of 100 cm/s or more), it is concluded that structures in this region experienced large drifts. Excessive drift (1) exposed a myriad of construction and detailing problems leading to severe structural damage and collapse, (2) induced overturning caused by p‐delta for some buildings, and (3) caused widespread damage to brittle masonry partitions. The main lesson is simple: ductility is necessary but not sufficient. It is urgent that seismic drift limits are tightened in high‐seismicity regions worldwide.

An improved seismic vulnerability index methodology is formulated on the basis of eight modeled parameters that are designed according to earthquake-resistant design concept and derived from the empirical vulnerability index that was initiated by the Group of National Defense against earthquake, named as GNDT Level approach. The results indicated that there is a good correlation between the analytical modeling approach and the observed fragility features during in-situ field investigations. To prove that the proposed methodology is accurate and reliable, the verification of the current methodology is performed through the experimental testing related to school building damages during Ranau Earthquake.