The track Earthquake Engineering, in the Master of Science on Civil Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, aims at educating engineers who, well rooted within a structural background suitable to operate in engineering studies and in public technical offices, have complemented their skills in various fields, including the seismic design of new structures, the assessment and retrofit of existing ones, the strengthening of historic buildings, the evaluation of seismic stability of soils and of the effect of the superficial geology on the amplification of seismic shaking.

Therefore, an engineer with transversal skills and expertise, which is currently absent in the Italian professional panorama, although this is rapidly and concretely promoting widespread activities of seismic risk classification and mitigation. It is expected that such professional figure will also have concrete opportunities to be appreciated abroad, the course being entirely proposed in English.

The first year is devoted to the introduction of approaches to seismic hazard and seismic risk evaluations, as well as of seismic zoning, that will go in parallel with the more classical formative topics of structural engineering and of structural dynamics.

During the second year, the student will be introduced to more specific topics of earthquake engineering, such as the criteria for the seismic design of new structures, the strengthening and retrofit of existing structures, the experimental methods, the geotechnical seismic design criteria and the evaluations of seismic stability of the soil. The introduction to economic evaluations of risk mitigation measures will also have an important impact to complete such interdisciplinary track.