A new technology breakthrough will revolutionize how steel buildings are designed, remodeled and secured in the wake of terrorist attacks across the globe.

Having lived through Oklahoma City and September 11, it doesn't take a wild imagination to picture a truck loaded with explosives parked at the curb of a multi-story steel building.

Within seconds, that steel building could collapse.

An explosion takes out a supporting column, causing the failure of a main girder and the subsequent collapse of the metal building above. At risk are the lives of hundreds - maybe more in bigger structures.

Until now, engineers have been limited to an approach called the "Finite Element Method," or FEM, to design buildings. The weakness of FEM-based models is that they bend but don't break; deform but don't separate.

Not an accurate picture of what happens in reality.

Finally, after 12 years of research and development, a new method termed the "Applied Element Method," has been completed, redefining the ways in which progressive collapse, seismic wave effect, high wind, glass and blast are analyzed by engineers.

The metal building referenced most often in the study was the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Using the new model, engineers know that if the steel bars in the main concrete girder had been doubled, the structure would have better withstood the blast and many more would have survived.

Knowing any and all potential vulnerabilities of a general steel building design allows the making of informed decisions regarding it.

That means decisions as they relate to structural and architectural layouts, determining steel buildings' envelopes and perimeters, alternate material selections, and security procedures.

Creators of the technology believe that with the advent of this new technology, commercial steel building owners, designers, architects, engineers, insurance underwriters, and security experts can see what will happen before an event takes place.

When that event is a bomb going off within a steel building's perimeter, an earthquake underneath it, or a hurricane assaulting it from the side, that knowledge is invaluable.