Current practice of earthquake engineering in construction industry in Afghanistan and recommendations Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com Introduction Earthquakes are one of greatest natural hazards to life and infrastructure in the world. History and technical records narrate that they inficted the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and caused the destruction of countless cities and villages around the world. Earthquakes’ devastations are almost entirely due to the effect of earthquakes on civil engineering structures and the ground supporting them. Therefore, modern societies have decided to minimize earthquakes induced catastrophes by proper application and practice of earthquake engineering fundamentals in the construction of their infrastructures. As to other countries in the world, Earthquakes also pose serious threats to life and infrastructure in Afghanistan. The history of destructive earthquakes in Afghanistan shows that many parts of the country are seismically active regions where triggering of strong earthquakes is also anticipated in the future. The potential for happening strong earthquakes requires that the country’s infrastructure have to be designed and constructed by effective application of earthquake engineering principals. The effective application of earthquake engineering principals, in other words the “Current Practice of Earthquake Engineering in Afghanistan” has been studied in this paper in three major areas. These major areas includes the reliability of seismic input data or probabilistic seismic hazard values, profciency of earthquake engineering practitioner and readily used methods of analysis in engineering designs, and adoption, enforcement of construction codes and standards. This paper concluded that the current practice of earthquake engineering is not effcient and adequate in producing earthquake tolerant infrastructure and hence the resultant infrastructure is highly vulnerable to earthquakes catastrophes. In addition, poorly practiced earthquake engineering has posed serious MOJ Civil Eng. 2018;4(2):60–64. Volume 4 Issue 2 - 2018 Mojeeburahman Mashal, Ismail Sarwary Kabul Polytechnic University, Afghanistan Correspondence: Mojeeburahman Mashal, Structural and Earthquake Engineering, Lecturer, Kabul Polytechnic University, Karta-e-Mamoorin Rd, Next to Police Academy, 5th District, Kabul Afghanistan, Email mojeebur@buffalo.edu Received: February 02, 2018 | Published: March 16, 2018 Abstract Earthquakes pose serious threats to life and infrastructure in Afghanistan especially in vulnerable densely populated cities such as Kabul. Active plate boundaries surround Afghanistan on the west, south, and east causing strong ground shakings in many parts of the country. These strong earthquakes often claim lives and cause social and economic losses to the nation. In order to reduce the extent of damage and loss of life during earthquake catastrophes, the effects of earthquake must be properly considered in design and construction of infrastructure including buildings, towers, bridges, dams, tunnels and other engineering structures that are constructed or will be constructed in regions of high seismicity in the country. In addition, parts of the country especially western Afghanistan are seismically inactive. In such regions, design and construction of infrastructure for large earthquakes will result in economic losses and inefficient use of resources. This paper evaluates the reliability and certainty of current practice of seismic design and incorporation of earthquake engineering principles in construction of civil engineering structures in seismically prone parts of Afghanistan. Factors influencing earthquake engineering practice such as I. Reliability of seismic design input data or current earthquake hazard map, II. Proficiency of earthquake engineering practitioners and methods of structural analysis, and III. Adoption and enforcement of seismic design and construction standards are evaluated. This paper concluded that the current practice of earth quake engineering in Afghanistan is not adequately reliable and therefore building and other infrastructures are either under-designed or over-designed where both result in sub-standard infrastructure.Under- designed structures threaten lives and cause economic losses during strong earthquakes, while over-designed structures are not economical and have wasted resources. At the end, recommendations are made to enhance the reliability of earthquake engineering practice in the country for producing earthquake tolerant infrastructure that will results in greatly reduced loss of lives and property. Keywords: Afghanistan, earthquake hazard map, infrastructure, seismic, construction codes and standards, structural analysis © 2018 Mashal et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially. 60 MOJ Civil Engineering Review Article Open Access