Book excerpt: Earthquake engineering is the ultimate challenge for structural engineers. Even if natural phenomena such as earthquakes involve great uncertainties, structural engineers need to design buildings, bridges, and dams capable of resisting the destructive forces produced by earthquakes. However, structural engineers must rely on the expertise of other specialists to realize these projects. Thus, this book not only focuses on structural analysis and design, but also discusses other disciplines, such as geology, seismology, and soil dynamics, providing basic knowledge in these areas so that structural engineers can better interact with different specialists when working on earthquake engineering projects."