Platform · The SP3 Engine
The engine behind every module
The SP3 Engine is our core intellectual property — building-specific, site-specific insight into seismic risk, resilience, and functional recovery at any level of building information.
Designing a new building for functional recovery, retrofitting an existing one, or screening thousands of buildings from rough inventory data — it's the same validated engine underneath, so your results stay consistent and comparable across every project.
Built on FEMA P-58 — and beyond it
The SP3 Engine starts from the public FEMA P-58 methodology, then adds seven years and $10M of proprietary development focused on automating, extending, improving, and validating building-specific risk assessment.
Automated building responses
The SP3 Structural Response Prediction Engine estimates structural responses for buildings up to 40 stories — with no structural modeling needed.
Detailed automation for wood and tilt-up
The methodology and engines extend to additional important structural systems: wood light-frames up to 5 stories and tilt-up buildings with up to 1,200 ft dimension.
Database expansions
A component fragility database expanded to more than 1,000 components — new hospital components, refined elevators, new tilt-up components, many structural system components, and completely revamped wood light-frame fragilities.
Building-specific with limited data
Automations — such as site-specific building and component properties — enable detailed building-specific risk assessment without a full engineering evaluation.
Downtime and recovery
Advanced downtime assessment that answers the question owners actually ask: how long until we can use the building again?
Validation-driven improvements
Extensive methodological improvements based on validation studies — residual drift modeling, collapse prediction, and auto-population of building components.
Large building portfolios
SP3-Portfolio and SP3-Batch extend the engine to automated assessment of thousands of buildings at once.
Why the results hold up
An open, defensible framework
Founded on the transparent FEMA P-58 risk analysis framework developed by the Applied Technology Council with FEMA funding — so your methodology is defensible and peer-reviewable.
Real engineering analyses, not just history
Where other models rely on empirical data and judgment, SP3 runs detailed Monte Carlo engineering analyses — giving reliable predictions even for buildings with no earthquake history, like modern tall buildings, post-1994 tilt-ups, and 5-story wood light-frames.
Extensively validated
Validated against real earthquake observations, including loss and red-tag data from the 1994 Northridge earthquake. See the validation webinars »
Full statistical results
Monte Carlo simulation yields a wealth of risk information: repair costs, repair and closure times for business interruption (reoccupancy, function, full repair), red-tag probability, safety metrics, building ratings, and component-level damage detail.
Because one engine underpins every module, you can add building information over time and watch your view of risk sharpen — from rough screening with SP3-Batch up to detailed evaluation with the SP3-RiskModel Standard and Advanced levels. The engine models the nuances of your building type, site properties, and structural and non-structural design, then estimates your repair costs and closure times.
Want the technical deep dive?
Our team presents the engine, its validation studies, and its methodology in detail — or talk it through directly with an SP3 engineer.
Watch the Webinars → Talk to an Engineer