Assessments have shown that certain GSA buildings are potentially vulnerable to progressive collapse. Yet, progressive collapse upgrades are extremely costly, so only a limited number of upgrades can actually be performed.

ARA developed the Decision Support Tool for Progressive Collapse (DST-PC) for the General Services Administration (GSA) to assist decision makers in determining which GSA buildings should receive funding for progressive collapse upgrades.

Decision Support Tool for training and software application

To guide decision makers in setting funding priorities, ARA programmed the DST-PC software to apply a systematic approach to compare common building attributes such as building size and location, significance, historic profile, progressive collapse profile, seismic profile, building code compliance and replacement costs.

As a decision support tool, DST-PC enabled the GSA to determine which buildings were most vulnerable to progressive collapse in order to justify the cost of upgrades to key facilities.