Abstract: Under the action of low-probability but very destructive heavy-tailed ground motion, the building damage and loss are expected to be significantly higher than that of ordinary earthquakes, which leads to the increase of uncertainty and variability in resilience and the traditional indexes of 84% assurance rate are no longer safe. This paper proposes a building seismic resilience design method considering the heavy-tailed distribution of rare earthquakes: constructing a heavy-tailed distribution model by introducing the actual intense earthquake records, combining the evaluation method in GB/T 38591-2020, and using reliability analysis to obtain the probability distribution of resilience indicators (such as building damage, repair cost, repair time and personnel injury). The optimized seismic performances have significantly improved based on the 84% quantile and reliability indexes to determine the upper bound of the potential loss, combined with the current specification of reinforced concrete frame structure and reliability-based multi-objective disaster optimization design.