Performance based design was developed in recent years, which deals with the structural performance through the life cycle. In the recent decade, performance based design has undergone lots of progress in theory and application in the field of earthquake engineering. Cost-effectiveness criterion is very important in performance based design, which pays more attention to the performance, safety and economy of the structure all together in seismic design and rehabilitation. The evaluation of life cycle cost is the key problem in cost-effective design, and the relevant research causes more and more attention. This project will study the evaluation of the life cycle cost, to establish the evaluation formulation considering different types of performance requests, including structural damage, human feeling and equipment operation; to study the methods of reliability analysis related to different performance requirements and methods dealing with correlations between different performance failure modes; to find the possible ways to evaluate the life cycle cost based on fuzzy theory etc.