Recently a small coastal cabin with 4 people inside was blown out to sea.
So just like the Tacoma Narrows bridge, where we realized aerodynamics became a first order priority once a bridge becomes large enough, we now have to prioritize the aerodynamics of even small buildings in windy areas.
This will only get worse as storms get stronger due to the increased energy because of climate change.
We will also have to look at existing buildings to secure them.
We might even have to build wind-breakers around some buildings, similar to wave breakers. Especially around buildings with historical significance that we want to preserve as is.
We will also gradually have to take into account the other nearby buildings and landscape. To avoid wind-tunnel effect down streets that can then make buildings unsafe. If you engineer a building in the open and its safe, but then build a street of buildings next to said building, then the wind-tunnel effect could make the original building unsafe. And vice versa.
We also have to reengineer lamp posts, powerlines, bus stops, cell towers, radio towers, billboards, fences, garages, basically anything “we’ve done like this for decades and it has been good enough”.
We also have to rethink our tree and forestry regulations. Norway generally have decent distance between powerlines and trees due to constant cutting along powerlines. But we have seen huge amounts of productive forest being destroyed by wind. During a storm in November 2021 over 7 million trees were toppled over by wind. To forestry people that’s around 1.7 million cubic meters of forest. Enough to build nearly 50 000 Norwegian homes. We really have to start computer-modeling forests for vulnerability to wind so that we can take preventive steps where feasible. For all we know a few well-placed wind breaks could have saved half the affected forest area during that storm. We also have to pay attention to not cause forests to become vulnerable by for example creating wind-tunnel effect with buildings at the edge of forests.
In summary, construction companies will need an aerodynamics engineer now, even if they build things that previously didn’t require any aerodynamics considerations. Wind has changed in strength enough that “We’ve always been fine doing it like this” is not a valid argument anymore. You can not use that excuse for a scaffold, cabin, boat house, outhouse, hen house, dog house, lamp post, fence post, power pole, lightning rod, radio tower, cell tower, satellite dish, snow fence, veranda, garage, garage door, mailbox, window, stove pipe, garden bench, playground installations, trampoline, bicycle-rack, road barrier, railroad crossing, billboards, fire-escapes, or anything else. And if you build an entire street of buildings or a mountain cabin then you especially need an aerodynamics engineer. You should even have an aerodynamics engineer if you build roads and ditches and whatnot, doesn’t have to be a full-time position. A quick glance from an aerodynamics engineer might make certain roads a bit less prone to roll semi trailers and buses. Which is nice for liability reasons. If you approach the ones you’re building the road for and say “we can make the road 15% less prone to roll vehicles for this amount and 20% for this amount because this is a very windy area with predominant winds straight across the road”, it will likely play out a lot better even if they say no, compared to if they then have to later reengineer the road because its impassable a quarter of the time.
Do I actually expect construction companies to take aerodynamics and wind into account? No. Do I expect laws and regulations to be changed to take aerodynamics and wind into account? No. Not until the ones who say “We’ve always done it like this and been fine” have all died and there’s only “I saw my neighbors house/fence/garage/roof/boat house/veranda/etc get blown away, I don’t want to build something that might fly back to me and kill or maim me and my loved ones”.
“It is not THAT the wind is blowing that is the problem, it is WHAT the wind is blowing that is the problem”. – It is also about HOW the wind is blowing, that’s the study of aerodynamics. Its the HOW that leads to the WHAT. Whenever you see the aftermath of a hurricane in the United States of America you see a lot of buildings that didn’t get any damages. That’s partly because of how the building was engineered and assembled, but also because of the aerodynamic properties of all the other buildings. The more you plan out buildings for wind resistance as a whole system of buildings and landscape, the less money you need to spend making each individual building stronger.
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