The world's most seismically active locales are represented in the projects profiled, where techniques for resisting catastrophic earthquake damage have been applied to many different types of buildings. Sites studied are in countries along the Pacific Rim -- the west coasts of North, Central, and South America; Australasia and the east coast of Asia and all its islands, known as the "Ring of Fire"; and less-affected areas in Eastern Europe, Greece, and Turkey.

Some projects show the latest techniques in earthquake resistance conceived by architects such as Rafael Mono and Arata Isozaki. Others deal with post-disaster situations; for example, a Polshek & Partners project to retrofit and add a new wing to a museum that suffered great damage in California's 1989 earthquake.

Many sizes of buildings are viewed, from very small projects, like a house by Shigeru Ban designed for the homeless after the Kobe disaster of 1995, to huge buildings such as the San Francisco Main Library by I. M. Pei. Categories of construction are wide-ranging: residential, commercial, religious, medical, and cultural facilities are all considered in this comprehensive report on life-saving construction strategies.