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Millions of people worldwide are in urgent need of affordable houses. According to the statistics, these people are mainly living in developing countries with a relatively high level of seismic risk and low to medium incomes. While traditional practices are unable to cope with currently high demands, large number of fatalities and wide spread damages during last earthquakes show that houses in many regions of the world are seismically vulnerable. This work aims at developing a simple and low-cost solution, inspired by good performance of traditional low-rise structures in Germany, known as "Fachwerkhaus". Therefore, the main parameters of this good performance are realized and adopted for the recommended solution, called systematically braced frames. To assure a high quality, an off-site prefabrication of main safety-relevant structural elements under strict supervision is supported here, while the rest of the structure can be accomplished by local labor, to generate local jobs, and using available materials, to provide cultural acceptance and to minimize costs. As required for the seismic study, horizontal stiffness and ductility are investigated analytically during the work.

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Dr.-Ing. Mohammad Samsamshariat, born in 1980, has studied civiland structural engineering. His PhD was accomplished in 2009,which addresses the big challenge of affordable housing inearthquake-prone regions of developing countries. He has workedfor several years as a structural engineer in Germany and in theMiddle East.

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