When a typhoon hit Tacloban in 2013, storm surges as high as 6 meters destroyed many structures, including public school buildings used as evacuation centers. The event sparked the revision of the National Structural Code of the Philippines to update wind codes. The government then designed a new standardized public school building, but only considered typical design loads. However, they needed to determine if the building could resist another storm event.

As part of a thesis conducted over two years, Japan’s Shibayama Laboratory at Waseda University conducted extensive research on numerical modeling of typhoons and storm surges to propose countermeasures against coastal disasters. Requiring software to analyze a school building against storm surges, they used STAAD.Pro structural analysis. Using the application’s post-processing capabilities, they determined that the building would indeed withstand these types of events. Once fully developed, the methodology will save PHP millions in structural damage and the lives of many Filipinos.