Background Global seismic risks continue to escalate due to urbanization in high-hazard zones, population growth, and aging infrastructure. Conventional force-based seismic design frequently prioritizes life safety while permitting extensive structural and non-structural damage, resulting in prolonged downtime, high repair costs, and substantial embodied-carbon impacts from reconstruction.
Objective This study examines the integration of performance-based seismic design, seismic isolation, energy-dissipation systems, advanced materials, and digital technologies to achieve simultaneously earthquake-resistant, sustainable, and resilient building structures.
Methods A comparative numerical framework was developed for five representative multi-story building models: conventional reinforced-concrete (RC) frame, performance-based design, base-isolated system, energy-dissipating system, and a sustainable advanced system incorporating high-performance materials and monitoring. Nonlinear time-history analyses under design-basis and maximum-considered earthquake intensities evaluated inter-story drift, base shear, floor acceleration, energy dissipation, residual drift, embodied carbon, and resilience indicators.
Results Advanced systems reduced peak inter-story drift by 40–65 %, floor accelerations by 45–60 %, and residual deformations substantially relative to conventional frames. Energy dissipation increased markedly, residual drifts remained below repair thresholds in most cases, and life-cycle carbon and recovery-time metrics improved. Cost-performance trade-offs favored isolation and damping when post-event functionality and embodied impacts were considered.
Conclusion Combining performance-based and resilience-based design with isolation, damping, advanced low-carbon materials, and digital monitoring yields structures that are safer, more functional after earthquakes, and environmentally preferable over the full life cycle. Further full-scale validation and field implementation remain essential for widespread adoption.