Colombia is one of the countries in South America with the highest exposure of population and property to significant seismic hazard. In the last century, earthquakes have caused more than 3000 fatalities and economic losses of approximately 2.3 billion USD. The Armenia earthquake (Mw 6.2) of January 1999 caused more than a 1000fatalities and an economic loss of almost 2% of the annual gross domestic product of Colombia. The wide spread damage was mostly due to the existence of non-engineered building and informal construction.