While most structural analysis software can evaluate everyday stresses, they often fail to prepare buildings for extreme events. As environmental disasters and severe weather become more frequent, clients demand greater confidence in building safety. Engineers need better tools to ensure their designs can withstand these challenges. Buildings live complicated lives. The day any large piece of infrastructure is completed is the day it also opens itself to the unknown. Unpredictable events, from fires and floods to earthquakes and explosions, will fiercely test the structure—perhaps well beyond the questions asked of it in the original design. According to the United Nations, climate-related disasters in 2020 caused more than 15,000 deaths with 98 million people affected, plus an economic cost of $171bn.* In 2023 there were a total of 399 natural disasters, with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noting that economic losses had now topped the $200bn mark.** For buildings to survive and protect the lives of the people using, working, or living within them requires an extra level of resilience; an inner ‘toughness’ that can be difficult to assess using most structural analysis software. While most such software is equipped to meet prescriptive design codes requirements—the everyday

ADINA is used worldwide for complex analyses. The Southwest Jiaotong University conducted an analysis under contract to study the structural integrity of the roof of a large railway station at Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, in China.