The primary goal of wind engineering research in this program is to conduct comprehensive studies of near-ground winds generated by tornadoes, thunderstorms, hurricanes and gust fronts and assess their damaging effects on built structures and developed lands (including farmland), with the purpose of improving their design to reduce damaging effects. Wind Engineering is a multi-disciplinary field of study that requires involvement of researchers from various departments of engineering, environmental and atmospheric sciences, economics, statistics and architecture. Tools such as wind tunnels and computational fluid dynamics, combined with analytical and statistical methods, are used to solve the relevant problems.