The facilities of the Structural Engineering Department of NTUA that will host the seconded personnel, comprise a 6 DOF earthquake simulator, two smaller one DOF shaking tables, reaction walls for testing RC and steel structures and all available software codes for addressing the most demanding computer simulation of any type of structures under severe seismic actions.

The personnel of the coordinator organization (47 faculty members) have contributed an extensive list of publications in the international literature with high scientific impact and a large number of doctorate students are currently conducting their PhD in the research field of the project.

The Department’s infrastructure with PC Labs and office spaces is adequate to accommodate staff from the Third Countries of the Network.

The National Technical University of Athens (NTUA, “Ethnikon Metsovion Polytechnion”) is the oldest and most prestigious Engineering School in Greece. It accepts the best students in the country according to the rankings of the yearly stringent national admittance examination. The School of Civil Engineering of NTUA offers a five-year M.Sc. degree in Civil Engineering as well as Post-graduate courses on Structural and Hydraulic engineering.

The Institute of Structural Analysis and Antiseismic Research (ISAAR), is one of the oldest and most active laboratories of NTUA. ISAAR belongs to the Structural Engineering Department of the School of Civil Engineering where 19 professors of different levels are affiliated. In terms of human capital ISAAR is composed of 6 faculty members and a group of highly selected pre-doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers. ISAAR has carried out extensive research activity in the scientific areas that are related to static-dynamic analysis and design of structures.

The faculty members have the capacity to undertake scientific work at the forefront of modern research in the following areas: Numerical simulation for the static and dynamic analysis of large-scale and non-conventional structures, verification and validation of commercial software and development of scientific computer codes for the analysis and design of structures.

The research group of Professor N.D. Lagaros established over 10 years ago constitutes a centre of excellence in NTUA with 1 faculty member, 3 post-doctoral researchers, 6 PhD students and a number of postgraduate and undergraduate students. The field of interest of the Group is the development and applications of algorithms and software for the solution and design of large-scale structural systems in high performance computing environments.

Currently working in the following scientific fields in the framework of competitive research projects or in the context of their doctoral studies:

• Non-linear dynamic analysis of concrete and steel structures under seismic loading,
• Solution of large-scale finite element problems with domain decomposition and data handling techniques on high performance parallel and distributed computer environments,
• Large-scale structural and design optimization of real world structures,
• Solution of large non-linear problems and path-following strategies in solid and structural mechanics,
• Adaptive strategies and solution techniques for p, h, hp finite element procedures,
• Multiscale methods for analysis and design of advanced structural materials,
• Stochastic finite element methods, reliability analysis and Monte Carlo simulation,
• Neural network applications in structural engineering and
• Soil-fluid-structure interaction problems.

ISAAR occupies a lab and office space of approximately 1200 m2. ISAAR also has in a special room an operational PC-cluster for parallel computing, consisting of 100-nodes in a separate room. ISAAR hardware is bought from external research funding and through the direct financial support of NTUA.