Building Safer Homes
This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.
Building Safer Homes
Researchers at The Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes applied the first realistic hurricane wind load simulation to a full-scale house in 2008, providing valuable information for how to make structures safer. The Western University facility is the first-of its-kind in the world to allow researchers to simulate and study realistic damage to full-scale houses from wind, snow and rain – all within a controlled environment. Capable of simulating pressures as strong as a Category 5 hurricane, it allows engineers and architects to build safer, healthier, more cost-effective homes, develop cost-effective ways to retrofit existing homes and reduce human error uring construction.
Western University
Founded in 1878, we deliver ‘The Western Experience’, an exemplary learning experience that engages the best and brightest people challenging them to meet ever-higher standards in the classroom and beyond.
We inform every dimension of a student – intellectual, social, cultural as well as physical. From our home in London, Ont., Canada, outward across every continent, Western prepares future leaders to succeed.
