As pointed out in the introduction of Part 1, the isolation strategy can be used to effectively decouple a' structure from its environment and thus the structure can be protected from damaging seismic loads or unwanted vibrations and noises from the environment. The method has been used for solving vibration and shock problems in machinery and equipment for many years, but its application to the protection of structures from seismic loadings is relatively recent. Owing to the current interest generated by the Northridge and Kobe earthquakes, an but one of the papers in this publication deal with seismic isolation. The one paper on vibration isolation by Yonekura discusses a measure to protect buildings from detrimental excitations of running trains. Seismic or base isolation has been used to protect bridges, buildings, industrial facilities, and nuclear reactors from damaging seismic loads since 1970. For each of these applications base isolation offers some unique advantages that the conventional strengthening method cannot. Some of these advantages are discussed in papers presented in this publication.