As part of the second phase, the BSSC is drilling down from the generic PBSD recommendations in the Phase 1 report to provide insight into specific issues for older, seismically vulnerable concrete buildings, These older buildings, known as non-ductile concrete buildings, in turn, will permit identification of research needs not currently being addressed by other research initiatives within the framework of performance-based seismic design.

These other research initiatives include the National Science Foundation (NSF) - Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Grand Challenge Project with the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center. The synergetic interaction between the BSSC project and the NSF Grand Challenge project will be mutually beneficial. The project also includes working with the Concrete Coalition, a group formed by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) to coordinate implementation strategies to mitigate risks posed by the older concrete structures.

As a group, older concrete buildings are generally considered the most dangerous building type, but the class includes a wide variety of structural systems and configurations, not all of which are in the high risk category. To achieve effective and efficient mitigation, the building class must be broken down into smaller subclasses that more consistently present seismic risk and are more readily identified. The identification of these subclasses also will allow determination of the highest priority research to enable rapid implementation of performance-based seismic design for mitigation.