1st Croatian Conference on Earthquake Engineering 1CroCEE 2021

Earthquakes are rather rare in Croatia. Therefore, citizens of Croatia are less motivated in understanding the earthquakes than the citizens of e.g. California or Japan. Unfortunately, this results in difficulties which civil engineers have in fulfilling the requirements of clients and even architects. Additionally, in education and lifestyle, Croatia is traditionally oriented towards Austria and Germany, northern countries where the earthquakes are not significant for the stability of the buildings. That is why the corresponding subjects were included in the civil engineering curricula in Croatia rather late. Also, this is why many of the family houses have been often built without any engineering support.
Even after the March earthquake damaged a considerable number of family houses and older buildings in Zagreb and the surroundings, the citizens in general still do not understand that a stronger earthquake could be expected and they do not recognize the difference between the reparation of the cracks and improvements of the structural stability.
The response of the Government showed that the community is ready to help people who lost their homes in the March earthquake, even those whose apartments or houses suffered damages. It is clear that a similar response could be expected in case other parts of the country got hit by an earthquake.
It is good to bear in mind that preventing damages of this kind is several times less expensive than dealing with the damages. Therefore, it would be advisable to invest in retrofitting the older buildings and family houses. The paper suggests education for the citizens of Croatia to facilitate the understanding of the importance of the civil engineering role. The paper proposes an addition to the education of architects to ease communication with the structural and geotechnical engineers. The paper proposes elements of education for the civil engineering study programmes and the graduated civil engineers to help them deal with seismological data.