One presents a general methodology to the evaluation of the seismic risk to civil engineering structures, with emphasis to building systems, and in sequence a series of applications is made to exemplify this proposal and to develop complementary procedures to the deterministic structural analysis. On this way, one considers the structural seismic excitation as a weakly stationary random process mainly defined by a ground acceleration power density function and one determines, in the frequency domain, similar structural response quantity functions. One applies, to this response functions, the first passage problem solution according to Vanmarcke and so determining the distribution probability functions of these maximum structural response quantities to remain below specified numerical levels, which are called barriers. From these probability distributions, one proceeds to develop: − a methodology to the structural seismic risk analysis, including a previous phase to define the seismic hazard over the Brazilian territory; − tools to evaluated the probabilistic compromise between a power spectrum density function of the seismic excitation for a region and a design response spectrum proposed to the same area; − the idea of a uniformly probable design response spectrum and the procedures to generate this function to be used in the analyses of the primary system; and to produce a uniformly probable coupled response spectrum for the analyses of secondary systems; − a comparison between the wind horizontal action capacity of regular building structures in Brazil and the capability which would be expected to the seismic hazard; − a procedure to generate a target power spectrum density function for the seismic hazard probabilistically associated to a prescribed design response spectrum for a site. The computational support to the frequency domain structural analysis is taken partially from SASSI-2000 program and the probabilistic paths are made by APESS and CA programs which have been developed inside this work.