This paper describes some recent developments in the selection of ground motions for design; the conditional mean spectrum approach and risk targeted ground motions. The conditional mean spectrum approach is just finding its way into practice and its application to a major dam is presented. Risk targeted ground motions are the basis for the next generation of building codes in the USA. The process of determining these motions is explained. Finally in the context of the retrofit of 800 schools in British Columbia, Canada, a performance based design procedure based on incremental dynamic analysis (IDA), with direct application to geotechnical earthquake engineering is presented. An interesting feature of this method is the segregation of hazard into subduction, sub-crustal and crustal earthquakes and the calculation of risk for each type independently and combining these risk components to obtain the total risk of violating the performance criterion
