Earthquake-Resistant Structural Design and Retrofitting Technologies: A Systematic Review of Performance Materials and Resilience Outcomes

Many buildings erected before modern seismic provisions remain prone to brittle failure, excessive drift and residual deformation, with loss of use often continuing long after the shaking stops. We reviewed recent structural design and retrofit technologies for earthquake-resistant buildings using a PRISMA 2020-adapted protocol. Ten ranked searches covered publications from 2018 to 2026. The final sample comprised 64 open-access journal studies with verified digital object identifiers; 63 of them (98.4%) were published from 2021 onward. Each study was coded by intervention, method, reported outcome and reporting quality. Seven themes were identified: performance-based design, base isolation, damping and energy dissipation, bracing and self-centring systems, fibre-reinforced polymer and jacketing methods, masonry and heritage retrofit, and integrated life-cycle retrofit. No single intervention performed best in every setting. Isolation worked well when displacement capacity and near-fault demand were checked explicitly. Dampers and braces reduced drift and energy demand, although uncertainty in device properties affected fragility and risk estimates. FRP and jacket strengthening addressed local member deficiencies, but their use still required assessment of the building-level load path. Retrofit decisions also increasingly involved energy, cost and environmental consequences alongside seismic performance. Based on this synthesis, we developed a framework linking hazard, vulnerability and performance objectives to intervention families and resilience outcomes. The framework is a preliminary map for similar problems. It cannot replace a full, case-specific investigation of any one building. Further work is needed on full-scale validation, uncertainty propagation, nonstructural performance, functional recovery and comparable life-cycle metrics.