# Seismic Design of Timber Buildings: Highlighted Challenges and Future Trends
## 3 Timber Buildings--Future Trends and Challenges in Seismic Design
### Tall Timber Buildings  
European strategy for a sustainable growth and sustainable society acknowledges the importance of EU research framework programs for increasing the offer of new high-quality products and services [53; 54]. Sustainable construction embraces a number of aspects, such as design and management of buildings and constructed assets, choice of materials, building performance as well as interaction with urban and economic development and management. Timber as a material and as a structural system could be an ideal material for a new era of construction. Without compromising architectural requirements, the transfer of part of the on-site construction activity to off-site production, independent from weather conditions, will ensure a more continuous activity, a better quality of the finished products and an improved control of their environmental characteristics, as discussed, for example, by [55; 56; 57; 58]. Building with timber, in recent years, has become a huge trend among the construction sector around the world. With products like CLT, the possibilities are enormous. It is obvious that the market is changing and wood as a structural material will become more relevant and more in use in the following years. It is now well understood that the concrete and steel industries are highly energy intensive and contribute to a significant portion of global carbon emissions, and wood is becoming an obvious solution to reduce it. If sustainably sourced, timber is undoubtedly one of the most environmentally-friendly materials currently available, being a natural carbon sink and truly renewable [59]. Tall timber buildings are built almost on a monthly rate and more and more are planned in the near future. Short overview of the existing tall timber building and buildings under construction are given in the Figure 2 and one erected building is shown in Figure 3.  
Figure 2: Tall timber buildings around the world—combined data [60; 61; 62]. Although, timber has a good reputation in earthquake-prone regions, in the new era of timber skyscrapers, seismic actions and detailing require additional attention in design and construction of such structures. Tendency to build taller multi-residential and non-residential buildings with more occupants will require additional precautions. In the previous chapter it was pointed out what should change and how the design of such buildings should be done [18]. Holistic approach must be appointed to a design of such structures. Namely, in addition to conventional actions such as permanent loads, imposed loads, snow and wind, there are several additional actions which can significantly affect structural behavior of timber buildings, such as thermal actions, moisture, mold, fire, etc. Therefore, special attention has to be paid to detailing in tall timber buildings (architural, structural and seismic detailing, special acoustics details, etc.). To prevent any potential structural damage in tall timber buildings due to aforementioned actions, continuous monitoring of buildings during their lifetime could be beneficial (installation of moisture sensors in critical places, vibration monitoring, etc.).