In many past and recent earthquakes it has been shown that the local conditions and, in particular, the local geology have a great influence on the observed seismic ground motion and, consequently, on the damage distribution in housing, industrial stock, and life-lines. Seismic microzoning is the usual procedure to have these local effects taken into account for engineering design and land-use planning, being a useful tool for earthquake risk mitigation. This volume presents a collection of papers mainly originated from a workshop on Seismic Microzoning, organized during the 23rd General Assembly of the European Geophysical Society (EGS) in Nice, France in April 1998. The workshop dealt with various geophysical tools for analysing the effects of the local soils of subsurface geology on seismic ground motion, namely the methods using experimental data such as microtremors, and the theoretical/numerical 1-D and 2-D modelling methods. Additional contributions discussing techniques for characterising soil properties, microzoning applications to several urban areas, and others were added to the volume to broaden this important topic. Introduction: Earthquake Microzoning.- Probabilistic Microzonation of Urban Territories: A Case of Tashkent City.- Active Tectonics and Seismic Zonation of the Urban Area of Florence, Italy.- 1-D Theoretical Modeling for Site Effect Estimations in Thessaloniki: Comparison with Observations.- Site Effects and Design Provisions: The Case of Euroseistest.- 2-D Modeling of Site Effects Along the EURO-SEISTEST Array (Volvi Graben, Greece).- Realistic Modeling of Seismic Input in Urban Areas: A UNESCO-IUGSIGCP Project.- Vrancea Source Influence on Local Seismic Response in Bucharest.- A 2-D Sensitivity Study of the Dynamic Behavior of a Volcanic Hill in the Azores Islands: Comparison with 1-D and 3-D Models.- A Numerical Experiment on the Horizontal to Vertical Spectral Ratio in Flat Sedimentary Basins.- Comparative Study of Microtremor Analysis Methods.- Surface Soil Effects Study Using Short-period Microtremor Observations in Almeria City, Southern Spain.- Preliminary Map of Soil's Predominant Periods in Barcelona Using Micro-tremors.- Caracas, Venezuela, Site Effect Determination with Microtremors.- Microtremor Measurements for the Microzonation of Dinar.- Site Effect Study in Urban Area: Experimental Results in Grenoble (France).- Seismic Zonation of Barcelona Based on Numerical Simulation of Site Effects.- Microzonations of Lisbon: 1-D Theoretical Approach.- Thessaloniki's Detailed Microzoning: Subsurface Structure as Basis for Site Response Analysis.- An Empirical Method to Assess the Seismic Vulnerability of Existing Buildings Using the HVSR Technique.
