Core Technology - SP3 Risk

Building-specific seismic risk, resilient design, and functional recovery insights for any level of building information

SP3 Core Technology

SP3 CORE TECHNOLOGY

The SP3 Risk Model Engine is the core intellectual property of SP3 and the underlying foundation for all of our SP3 software modules. This SP3 Engine provides seismic risk, resilience, and functional recovery insights that are building-specific and site-specific for any level of building information. Whether performing comprehensive resilient design (for Functional Recovery) of new buildings, retrofitting existing buildings, or running a screening assessment of thousands of buildings based on rough inventory data, or anything in between, the SP3 Risk Model Engine makes SP3 an easy-to-use and comprehensive platform for assessing seismic risk and resilience.

SP3 ENGINE DEVELOPMENT

The SP3 Engine is built on the public FEMA P-58 methodology, but includes 7 years and $10M of additional proprietary development. This development has focused on automating, extending, improving, and validating the building-specific seismic risk information that SP3 provides.

Example proprietary developments include:

Automated Building Responses

The SP3 Structural Response Prediction Engine, to enable structural response estimation for up to 40-story buildings with no structural modeling needed.

Detailed Automation for Wood and Tilt-Up

Extension of the methodology and engines to cover additional important structural systems such as wood light-frames up to 5-stories and tilt-up buildings with up to 1,200 ft dimension.

Database Expansions

Expansion of the component fragility database to more than 1,000 components, including new hospital components, refined elevators, new tilt-up components, many structural system components, and completely revamped wood light-frame fragilities.

Automations for Building-Specific with Limited Data

Automations to enable detailed building-specific risk assessment without a full engineering evaluation, such as site-specific building and component properties.

Validation and Methodology Improvements

Extensive building-specific risk assessment methodological improvements based on validation studies, such as residual drift modeling, collapse prediction and auto-population of building components.

Downtime

Advanced building downtime assessment for business interruption.

Assessment for Large Building Portfolios

SP3-Portfolio and SP3-Batch tools that enable automated assessment of large numbers of buildings.

SUMMARY OF THE SP3 ENGINE

Building-Specific Seismic Risk Insights

The SP3 Risk Model Engine provides these building-specific seismic risk insights by using detailed Monte Carlo engineering analyses that are automated through extensive proprietary research-backed SP3 Databases and SP3 Engines. These proprietary SP3 Databases and SP3 Engines were built over the last 7 years, leverage decades of research results, and enable the SP3 Engine to create a detailed seismic risk model of your building, handling the nuances of your building type, site properties, and your building structural and non-structural design. The SP3 Engine uses this detailed building model to then estimate your building-specific repair costs and building closure times.

FEMA P-58 Risk Analysis Framework

The SP3 Risk Model Engine is founded on the transparent open-source FEMA P-58 risk analysis framework developed by the Applied Technology Council and funded by FEMA.

Founded on Detailed Engineering Analyses

Founded on detailed engineering analyses, in contrast to other vendor and historical models based on empirical information and judgement, the SP3 Engine gives reliable predictions even for cases with no available earthquake experience data (e.g. new tall buildings, post-1994 tilt-ups, 5-story wood light frames).

Extensively Validated

The SP3 Risk Model Engine has been extensively validated against earthquake observation data, such as the experience data from the 1994 Northridge earthquake. (See our Webinars Page for more information)

A Wealth of Statistical Risk Information

The SP3 Risk Model Engine provides a wealth of statistical risk information from detailed Monte Carlo simulation including repair costs, repair times and closure times for business interruption (including reoccupancy, building function, and full repair), probability of red tagging, safety metrics, building ratings, and detailed information on expected damage to structural and non-structural components.

Seamlessly Refine Your View of Risk

The SP3 Risk Model Engine underpins all the SP3 building-specific seismic risk assessment modules, so you can seamlessly add additional building information to refine your view of risk, from low-building-information (using SP3-Express and SP3-Batch) up to detailed evaluation with much more building-specific data (using SP3-Standard and SP3-Advanced).