Recently, the Seismic Resilience Evaluation Platform for Urban Engineering Systems, led by Harbin Institute of Technology and directed by Professor Zhai Changhai from the School of Civil Engineering, and jointly completed with the University of Science and Technology Beijing, passed the scientific achievement evaluation organized by the China Association for Disaster Prevention. The evaluation committee concluded that the platform has, for the first time internationally, achieved a quantitative seismic resilience assessment covering single engineering units, such as buildings and structures, building clusters, as well as urban engineering systems, including transportation, power supply, communications, and medical systems.

The chair and vice chair of the evaluation committee were Academician Du Xiuli of Beijing University of Technology and Academician Zeng Bin of the Central Research Institute of Building and Construction, respectively. The committee listened to the project team's overall technical presentation, conducted in-depth inquiries and discussions on the achievement report, and unanimously agreed that the project has achieved intelligent and rapid simulation of urban seismic ground motion fields, quantitative seismic resilience evaluation of urban engineering systems such as buildings and structures, and the expansion of vulnerability databases for engineering systems. The related technical achievements provide critical technical support for the development of earthquake-resilient cities and communities in China.

It is understood that, with rapid socioeconomic development and the implementation of the new-type urbanization strategy, urban safety has become a significant issue affecting China's sustainable development. The concept of resilient cities has been successively incorporated into the Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan and the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. At the end of 2023, General Secretary Xi Jinping once again emphasized the construction of resilient cities and, for the first time, proposed to comprehensively advance the development of resilient and safe cities.

Under the guidance of Academician Xie Lili, the Urban Infrastructure Safety and Resilience Research Center of the School of Civil Engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology has leveraged interdisciplinary integration of civil engineering, artificial intelligence, and related disciplines, focusing on key theoretical and technical issues in the seismic resilience of urban buildings (and building clusters) and infrastructure engineering systems. Through ten years of sustained research, supported by projects such as the National Key Research and Development Program of China and key programs of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the team has overcome major challenges in resilience assessment, including intelligent and rapid generation of large-scale regional seismic ground motion fields, insufficient data and large-scale complexity of urban building inventories, and the high network complexity of infrastructure systems.

A systematic, theoretical, and technical framework for the seismic resilience of urban building clusters and infrastructure engineering systems has thus been established. The team took the lead in formulating China's first standard and software platform for seismic resilience assessment of urban engineering systems, forming a complete achievement chain encompassing theory–methodology–technology–standards–software and realizing a transition of urban seismic resilience assessment from a conceptual stage to implementable theories, methodologies, and engineering technologies.

The research outcomes have been applied in multiple national and provincial/ministerial-level codes and standards, data processing at the National Strong Motion Observation Network Center, resilience enhancement of dual-use (emergency and normal-operation) expressways in mountainous areas of Beijing, and seismic resilience assessments of typical community-scale building clusters and infrastructure engineering systems in Shanghai, among more than 50 major engineering projects. These achievements have provided important theoretical foundations and technical support for major national demands, including the construction of resilient cities, urban diagnostics and renewal, and the development of dual-use emergency infrastructure.