TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 440, Performance-Based Seismic Bridge Design (PBSD) summarizes the current state of knowledge and practice for PBSD. PBSD is the process that links decision making for facility design with seismic input, facility response, and potential facility damage.

The goal of PBSD is to provide decision makers and stakeholders with data that will enable them to allocate resources for construction based on levels of desired seismic performance.