The time spent by individuals inside various types of buildings - private housing, offices and public buildings - is estimated to be over 80% of their lifetime. The number of people inside buildings at any given moment is therefore particularly high. This means that in addition to damage to material goods, any type of incident that involves built assets has a high probability of affecting a large number of people.
A new framework for structural design is afforded by the European suite of standards for the design of structures, the structural Eurocodes. In the suite, EN 1990 Basis of structural design published in 2002 is dedicated to structural reliability. EN 1990 translates theoretical developments into practical tools, and defines general methods and procedures to be applied by other Eurocodes, namely EN 1991 on actions, EN 1992 for concrete structures and other Eurocodes for other materials, as well as for geotechnical and seismic design.
For more information on this topic please refer to “Safety of Structures”, an independent technical expert review of partial factors for actions and load combinations in EN 1990 "Basis of Structural Design".