Seismic risk assessment at the city scale has always been useful for pre-earthquake planning, managing future investments, and prioritizing the seismic repair and retrofit of existing buildings immediately after the earthquake. It is carried out by combining hazard, exposure, and vulnerability models. Exposure in this context, refers to the elements at risk: population, buildings, lifeline systems, or socioeconomic activities. Risk assessment analysis for different regions and cities worldwide shows that exposure and vulnerability are key elements for effective risk assessment. This paper provides an inside into the development of an exposure model of Strumica, North Macedonia, that describes the distribution of Strumica's main residential, industrial, and commercial building classes. The exposure database consisting of the existing building inventory is created using the international standard taxonomy for earthquake risk assessment, proposed by the Global Earthquake Model. This exposure model points out problems and concerns brought about by the implementation process and details the practical solutions and strategies used to achieve the set goals. The long-term expectation is that this exposure model will allow updating existing plans for emergencies, crises, and disasters, allowing city planners to include seismic risk assessment analyses that contain real data to encourage future risk reduction strategies.

The effects of soil-structure interaction (SSI) are usually neglected in the current practice of seismic analysis and design  of bridges. The objective of this research study is to assess the significance of SSI for the seismic response of multi span reinforced concrete girder bridges. The focus is on the behaviour of the integrated global bridge structural system.  The study is based on the representation of a soil-bridge system. It has been found that SSI greatly affects the dynamic  behaviour of bridge piers, leading to more flexible systems and larger total displacements. The soil medium has been  analysed by applying different soil densities in order to consider the soil stiffness. The study has focused on soil structure interaction effects, and the results are analysed accordingly. The soil medium has been taken into consideration  as a four-layered infill, as a dense and loose medium. The bridge structure is taken to be an RC structure. The boundaries  of the soil medium are considered as infinite elements in order to absorb the radiating waves. Related comparisons are done with references and experimental results, in which considerably acceptable results are obtained. The newly proposed methodology efficiently models both the interaction of soil and bridge structures and simultaneously the far field of the soil model in which the wave reflections are softened. The case study chosen in this work considers different strengths of soil models on which the bridge structural response is analysed in detail. 

CRISIS project aims at improving the disaster and emergency management through building a harmonized and efficient system for risk assessment of basic services and transport infrastructure in the targeted cross-border region. The main project activities include: (1) Cross-border multi hazard assessment; (2) Needs assessment; (3) Cross- border multi-risk assessment; and (4) Development of cross-border web base platform for risk assessment and management. The main stakeholder of the project is the civil protection and disaster management national authorities in the cross-border region where more than 500.000 inhabitants live, as well as all academic partner institutions that will share the knowledge and strengthen the mutual cooperation.

Horizontally curved concrete girder bridges have complex dynamic characteristics because of their asymmetry and non-uniform mass and stiffness distribution. Their seismic behaviour is considerably affected by various such as structural characteristics, radius of the superstructure curvature and local site conditions. The computational, three-dimensional (3D) bridge models consisting of concrete girders with concrete deck, single pier columns and caps were created in OpenSees analyzing a representative, three-, four- and five-span continuous curved concrete girder bridges in N. Macedonia. Different seismic hazard levels and soil conditions were chosen in order to perform site-specific hazard calculations to investigate the effect of critical curved bridge parameters on the seismic response using a group of representative bridges. Two levels of capacity were considered: damage and collapse limit state (DLS and CLS). The results from the performed extensive nonlinear analyses including uncertainties were used to estimate the influence of the number of spans, deck width, pier height, deck horizontal curvature radius and local site effects on the bridge performance. The influence of soil conditions and superstructure curvature are significant for the seismic vulnerability of girder bridges, especially those with more spans. With the increase of the superstructure curvature radius, the bridges become more vulnerable, particularly if they have more spans and are founded on soil of weaker characteristics. The difference in the probability of damage occurrence to bridges with smaller number of spans, regardless the curvature radius, is small if these are founded on a good base. In the case of CLS, such probability differs extensively, particularly in multi-span bridges founded on weak soil. Regardless the curvature radius and the soil characteristics, the width of the superstructure has a favorable effect upon the seismic response of the selected type of bridges. Bridges with piers of a greater height and greater curvature radius exhibit considerably less favorable seismic behavior than bridges of smaller curvature radius founded on better soil.