Dr. Brian Haus: If we don't act, we lose time because that next big impact could  come tomorrow.

Or it could come next year.

NARRATOR- Rob Diaz de Villegas: Irma, Michael,  Ian.

These Category four and five hurricanes hit Florida within the last five years, as did  several smaller storms.

They've destroyed homes and businesses, totaling over $200 billion in  damage.

It's not a fluke.

It's a trend.

Strong storms are landing with increasing frequency,  and yet our coasts are largely unprotected.

So how can we strengthen coastal communities  against wind and waves?

That's what the University of Miami SUSTAIN Lab is trying to figure out,  using a state of the art hurricane simulator.

Peisen Tan: So you can customize a hurricane,  can create a hurricane, build a hurricane and study specifically what you want.

So this is a computer that controls wave.

NARRATOR- Rob Diaz de Villegas: Soon, Peisen  Tan will activate this 1460 horsepower fan to unleash a hurricane within this 38,000  gallon tank.

Peisenn and the rest of the SUSTAIN team are developing solutions that  help communities withstand hurricane waves, which on the coast cause more damage than wind.

First, they must understand how waves  form and how they transmit energy.

Dr. Brian Haus: If you have a calm  surface, and the wind starts to blow, there are some initial perturbations.

The  waves starts to form.

Very small waves first.

Peisen Tan: This is a monochromatic  wave with a seven centimeter amplitude, which is like a rough wave in the ocean.

Dr. Brian Haus: Over time and distance, the waves continue to grow as the  wind pushes on the forming waves.

Peisen Tan: And now I think  we're already in a cat one intensity right now.

There are tons of sprays  and bubbles all over the water surface.

Dr. Brian Haus: The wind is pushing against  that water and adding energy to the water, energy and momentum.

So as that wave  continues to propagate and grow, all that wind energy is going into those  waves and they can become very large.

NARRATOR- Rob Diaz de Villegas:  Because of the weight of water, the larger the wave, the more energy it transmits.

Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos: One cubic foot of water  is 64 pounds.

If we take 4 cubic feet of water, it's basically the average  weight of an NFL player.

Now, imagine an NFL player running to  you and basically tackling you.

Now, imagine a sea of NFL players coming to  you and then coming again and again.

Peisen Tan: We’re at a category 5 intensity right  now.

The sea sprays are going all the way out.

NARRATOR- Rob Diaz de Villegas:  Category five waves may look a mess, but there is an organized wave motion here  propelling the weight of water towards our coasts.

Coasts that once looked like  this.

This is Saint Vincent Island in the Florida panhandle.

It's a National  Wildlife Refuge and a glimpse at what had once been one of Florida's best natural  defenses against hurricanes: Barrier Islands.

Dr. Brian Haus: You know, over the  pre settlement times in Florida, the barrier islands were natural.

They basically served the function of protecting the mainland from  storms and things like that.

NARRATOR- Rob Diaz de Villegas: Florida was  further protected by other natural systems.

Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos: Natural  systems like salt marshes, seagrasses, oyster reefs, coral reefs, even  mangroves- they all kind of protect us, but they all need space and time.

And I argue we don't have that.

NARRATOR- Rob Diaz de Villegas:  In much of Florida, these natural systems have been replaced by human  structures built directly on the coast.

Miami Beach, for example, is  built right on a barrier island.

The SUSTAIN Lab designs barriers to protect those  hotels and condos from wave energy.

The challenge is to engineer a barrier that will slow down  the waves in the same way natural systems would.

Their designs are tested in a hurricane simulator.

Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos: So what we want to avoid is that that energy transfers  by impact into the structures.

Dr. Brian Haus: Traditional  construction of things like sea walls.

So a sea wall doesn't take  any energy out.

It bounces energy off.

Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos: But sometimes this  also worsens the conditions in nearby areas.

Dr. Brian Haus: The key thing for waves  is they go into things like salt marshes, oyster reefs, seagrasses, mangroves-  they disrupt the motion of the water.

Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos: If we can  actually create friction or dissipate the energy by breaking the waves  of turbulence and you do it on the right locations when they arrive at  the shoreline, you’ll have less impact.

NARRATOR- Rob Diaz de Villegas: To do this, SUSTAIN has developed a hybrid approach that  combines engineering with natural systems.

Dr. Brian Haus: The SEAHIVE is a way  to replace a traditional sheet pile sea wall with something that is perforated,  something that can dissipate more energy locally as opposed to just reflect it,  which is what happens at the sea wall.

Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos: The units  are hexagonal.

Hexagonal prisms, hollow on the inside, with a series  of holes on their side faces.

So what happens there is we pile them  up vertically and horizontally.

NARRATOR- Rob Diaz de Villegas: The holes slow  down wave energy and can be used as planters for mangroves, marsh grasses and coral  reefs which further break up the waves.

Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos:So create  kind of like a living shoreline, a hybrid system that we can adapt.

NARRATOR- Rob Diaz de Villegas: SUSTAIN is  working towards deploying Sea Hive modules to test sites within the next year.

If they  work, they could be strategically deployed more widely over the coming decades,  helping to buffer the impact of storms.

In any year, anywhere in Florida,  a category five hurricane can hit.

Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos: With all the communities  we see more and more, I would say with climate change and rising temperatures, the  desertification of the coastlines, I mean, it's almost kind of like the perfect catastrophe  scenario for the communities.

So luckily, we have been doing better in terms of  preparation, in terms of our codes, in terms of construction.

So whenever we develop  something, we want to make sure that this could be used to protect not only the vulnerable  regions, but also the vulnerable population.