Irish Troubles Open Markets In Colombia, United States
Because of their climate or geology different countries have developed their own special skills for engineering building resistance to survive extreme local conditions. Northern Ireland faces few such natural challenges, but its hard history of political violence provided design expertise that may now be in demand as other countries confront their buildings' vulnerability to terrorism.
In decades of strife, Northern Ireland engineers have progressively learned how to design buildings to fend off all sorts of attacksfrom lone rifle shots to earth-trembling car bombs. "In the early days, the threat was unknown and was evolving rapidly," says a senior official at the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), requesting anonymity. "Now the design is still done on a threat basis, but we now can predict the threat."