Building owners and managers can always make their facilities safer, but at what cost? Three years after the United States learned how vulnerable its landmark facilities were, a new software tool is being released that can help building owners and managers calculate and compare life-cycle costs of various methods used to reduce terrorist risk at buildings. Due out in beta version in September, with version 1.0 promised for March 2005 and a final version a year after that, the software "will allow building owners and managers to make comparisons among several alternative risk mitigation measures under different user-defined disaster scenarios," according to a recent report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Read "Cost-Effective Responses to Terrorist Risks in Constructed Facilities"