Wall of Wind Mitigation Challenge

Wall of Wind Mitigation Challenge Overview:

The International Hurricane Research Center (IHRC), located on the campus of Florida International University (FIU), has developed the Wall of Wind Mitigation Challenge (WOW! Challenge) for South Florida high school students. This community education outreach project is graciously supported in large part through a grant from the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

Wall of Wind Challenge
The NHERI Wall of Wind (WOW) Experimental Facility (EF) located at FIU’s College of Engineering and Computing was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to be a national facility that 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. Essentially, it is an array of 12 very large electric fan motors that are used to test structures, materials and products and their ability to withstand hurricane force winds.
To learn more about the NSF-NHERI Wall of Wind, please visit: https://fiu.designsafe-ci.org/

The WOW! Challenge is a judged competition. 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. Student teams prepare three components for the competition to address the hurricane wind mitigation challenge: a physical test, an oral presentation and a written technical paper. The mitigation concepts are tested by the WOW on the day of the live competition.
The WOW! Challenge requires problem solving, teamwork, and creativity, and the topics of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, architectural design, and business entrepreneurship. The high school students are inspired to pursue STEM education and careers in wind engineering and hurricane mitigation and be the next generation of engineers to address natural hazards and extreme weather. The competition has real world applications and benefits society as a whole by developing hurricane mitigation techniques that can lead to enhanced human safety, property loss reduction, insurance cost reduction, and a culture of hurricane preparedness.

2026 Wall of Wind Mitigation Challenge:

The objective for the 2026 FIU Wall of Wind (WOW) Mitigation Challenge is to reduce the wind-induced force on a building’s foundation, by optimizing its overall shape. Teams are tasked with developing a design that will improve a tall building’s aerodynamic performance. Teams will construct a model representing a tall building. The tall building models will be tested by the NSF-NHERI Wall of Wind at FIU to evaluate the effectiveness of the design.
The competition will require a written technical research paper, a live oral presentation, and a physical wind test of a tall building model by the NSF-NHERI Wall of Wind. For all the details, please refer to the specific documents describing the exact instructions found in the WOW! Challenge Documents section below on this web page.
Teachers can have as many students as they wish to participate on their team for the Challenge. They can all assist with preparing all three components for the Challenge. However, teams can only have up to four students do the live oral presentation. The rest of the team, teachers, and chaperones can observe the live oral presentation and the live wind test of their tall building model.

2026 Important Dates:

The Wall of Wind Mitigation Challenge is Thursday, March 19th, 9am to 12:30pm.
Written technical research papers are due electronically as a PDF document by Monday, March 16th at 12:00pm.
Pick-up or drop-off of the tall building models will be Monday March 16th and Tuesday, March 17th.

2026 Location of Wall of Wind Mitigation Challenge:

NSF-NHERI Wall of Wind at FIU’s Engineering & Computing Center,

10555 W. Flagler Street, FIU Engineering Center, Miami, FL 33174

For more information or questions, please contact:

Erik Salna, M.S.
Associate Director for Education and Outreach
International Hurricane Research Center
Extreme Events Institute, an FIU Preeminent Program
Florida International University
Office: 305-348-1146
Cell: 954-818-8175
Email: esalna@fiu.edu

WOW! Challenge Results:

WOW! Challenge Documents:

WOW! Challenge Powerpoints:

WOW! Challenge Videos:

WOW! Challenge Media:

WOW! Challenge Technical Library:

WOW! Challenge Related Links:

Laboratories: Laboratory for Wind Engineering Research

Wall of Wind Mitigation Challenge

Ioannis Zisis

Web Tools During Hurricane

Wall of Wind Research Projects and Industry Funding