Hurricane Ian dramatically changed our coastlines, damaged homes and caused serious flooding when it struck Florida in 2022.

Oregon State University researchers looked at Hurricane Ian's impact on coastal communities and saw an opportunity to investigate storm surges and how to protect people's homes.

"So those houses are 1:3, which means everything is dramatically three times smaller than the real house… but also the response of the house, how it's broken and how is damages is also scaled properly to represent what happens in nature,” Pedro Lomonaco, director of the Hinsdale Wave Research Lab, said.

It's all about seeing how houses in coastal communities hold up to storm surge.

"We build those in our directional wave basin. Our directional wave basin is imagined like an Olympic-size s

See Full Page