DDA Forensics was a proud sponsor and judge at the annual Wall of Wind Mitigation Challenge (WOW! Challenge) for South Florida high school students. Our Managing Partner, Jonathon Diego and Director of Engineering, Ziad Azzi, were onsite to help with project review and judging. The event was held on March 21 in Miami.
The WOW! Challenge is a judged competition in which teams of high school students are challenged to develop an innovative mitigation concept and solution within well-defined guidelines developed by the WOW Research Team. This year’s objective was to design a wind mitigation barrier that would provide the best wind mitigation for a Miami Beach condominium property. The wind mitigation barrier models were tested by the NSF-NHERI Wall of Wind at FIU to evaluate the effectiveness of the mitigation solution. The competition required a written technical paper, an oral presentation, and a physical wind test of a building model by the NSF-NHERI Wall of Wind.
“It was an absolute pleasure to be back to the annual FIU Wall Of Wind Challenge! I had the opportunity to serve as a judge for a total of 11 models built by high school students. This is such a great community service since it instills lots of interest, passion, and motivation in the new generation to learn about the importance of wind engineering and natural hazards, especially in the state of Florida! We had the pleasure to serve as a sponsor for this yearly fruitful event,” says Azzi.
The NHERI Wall of Wind Experimental Facility located at FIU’s College of Engineering and Computing is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is part of the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) network. The WOW enables researchers to better understand wind effects on civil infrastructure systems and to prevent wind hazards from becoming community disasters. The WOW is the largest and most powerful university research facility of its kind and is capable of simulating a Category 5 hurricane with winds over 157 mph.
“We’re proud to participate and sponsor the Wall of Wind Mitigation Challenge again this year! This competition allowed our team to collaborate with talented students as they developed and tested their designs, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in wind mitigation. We were impressed by their creativity and problem-solving skills,” says Diego.
The challenge is hosted by the International Hurricane Research Center (IHRC) and Extreme Events Institute (EEI) with grant support from the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
At DDA Forensics, we’re committed to education, mentorship, and sharing engineering excellence. Our multi-disciplinary engineering team is highly skilled in forensic investigations. Specializing in servicing the insurance and legal industries, we understand the importance of a clear, concise, and conclusive determination.