The WHIP Center’s mission is to pursue research of interest to industry and government agencies to enhance the resiliency of buildings and infrastructure to extreme windstorms such as hurricanes and tornadoes.
Estimation of wind hazard for a community or a location and understanding of wind speeds and turbulence in hurricanes, tornadoes, and other extreme wind events within the boundary layer are part of research agenda. Field measurements and statistical analyses are pursued to obtain results that help industry partners.
Vulnerability is a function of wind hazard exposure and robustness of the building and infrastructure such as transmission lines. Development of damage probabilities (fragility curves) in different type of windstorms (e.g. tornado, hurricane, downburst) for a variety of buildings and infrastructure systems will assist in improving estimation of vulnerability of the built environment.
Societal impacts include displacemets of residents, relocation of offices and closing of businesses. These have major impacts on economic well-being of the society and suffering by people. Research in supply chain, labor market, and sociology can advance in understanding of impact and mitigating in future storms. Big data, social survey and statics are employed to pursue research.
Community resiliency is gained by providing robustness of buildings and infrastructure and improving ability to recover quickly from damage caused by windstorms. Innovative new building products and approaches to retrofit building and infrastructure systems can improve resiliency. Analytical methods and experimental testing are pursued to develop products to enhance resiliency.
© Wind Hazard and Infrastructure Performance Center (WHIPC). All Rights Reserved
Web design by: Imagineering Design, Inc.
