{"id":19497,"date":"2023-07-20T16:19:04","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T16:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=19497"},"modified":"2023-07-21T06:41:33","modified_gmt":"2023-07-21T06:41:33","slug":"nps-student-faculty-research-helps-develop-climate-ready-force-through-infrastructure-resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=19497","title":{"rendered":"NPS Student, Faculty Research Helps Develop Climate-Ready Force through Infrastructure Resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MONTEREY, Calif. (July 18, 2023) The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are often called upon to respond to the worst of disasters, whether natural or man-made. Students and faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) are exploring different aspects of disaster preparedness and response, with their research being adopted by Navy and state emergency management officials for the purpose of \u201cbuilding climate resilience\u201d in line with the Secretary of the Navy\u2019s \u201cClimate Action 2030\u201d strategy. (U.S. Navy photo illustration)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Through the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Collaboration & Assessment <\/a>(CIRCA) project, NPS students are answering the call to action alongside faculty in the institution\u2019s Center for Infrastructure Defense<\/a> (CID), and producing tangible impact on the resilience of military installations and local communities in preparation for the worst of disasters \u2013 whether natural or man-made.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe initially set out to model and understand interdependent infrastructure vulnerabilities of military installations like power and water supply, but this soon expanded out to how these relate to local communities,\u201d explained Dan Eisenberg, NPS Operations Research<\/a> (OR) assistant professor and CID deputy director.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur case studies necessarily involve working with local stakeholders, from emergency management agencies to fire chiefs and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), hence the focus on \u2018collaboration\u2019 in the name,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This spirit of collaboration at CID has proven foundational to expanding research into climate and its impact, as evidenced by the selection of NPS to host the second Department of the Navy (DON) Climate Tabletop Exercise in April 2023, in partnership with the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. During the two-day event, which was attended by Meredith Berger, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment (EI&E), NPS students and participants concentrated on three focus areas \u2013 water security, energy security, and coastal resilience \u2013 and identified problem statements, challenges, and specific solutions to pursue.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, implementation of strategies to protect critical infrastructure is the goal. In fact, past climate and operations research products developed by NPS students and faculty are being directly implemented by DON, federal and state agencies as part of their disaster preparedness planning.<\/p>\n

To wit: the State of Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HI-EMA) recently adopted CIRCA\u2019s work as part of their Distribution Management Plan<\/a>. Based on several NPS student theses, the contribution is influencing decisions for the optimal preposition of emergency supplies for the state, according to Eisenberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our work in Hawaii looks at how to get food, water and fuel to the people who need it in the event of a major disruption,\u201d he noted. \u201cMilitary installations are particularly interested in this because they want to know how they can support local communities if the need arises.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, a thesis by NPS 2023 Winter Quarter graduate U.S. Navy Lt. Felicia Goodell, \u201cEmergency Field Distribution for Disaster Relief on Marine Corps Base Hawaii (MCBH),\u201d models optimal positioning of refueling generators to ensure continuity of electric power for the military base.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur research addresses how any installation can keep the power on through any sort of disaster situation,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is going to be used not only for other installations in Hawaii, but also for the community at large.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recognizing the impact of her work, Goodell received the prestigious Military Operations Research Society (MORS) Stephen A. Tisdale Graduate Research Award for the 2023 Winter Quarter.<\/p>\n

Goodell\u2019s research was considered so through and relevant that it was immediately adopted by MCBH, as well as being included in HI-EMA\u2019s Distribution Management Plan along with the work of two other graduate students.<\/p>\n

\u201cLt. Goodell\u2019s thesis could not come at a better time,\u201d said Michael May, the deputy director of supply for MCBH. \u201cWe know we need more capabilities for fuel at our installation and her work is helping us plan for future energy resilience. This work supports our current need and will be talent to the fleet to support mission assurance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) through its Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program<\/a> (SERDP), the CIRCA project seeks to develop methods that measure worst-case disruptions across interdependent infrastructure systems of Department of Defense (DOD) military installations as well as create models that support DOD infrastructure planning and management.<\/p>\n

The extensive damages experienced in the wake of disasters like Hurricane Florence in September 2018 at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, demonstrated the need for modeling both to measure losses and provide military leadership methods to incorporate compound threats into infrastructure investment plans.<\/p>\n

CIRCA began its work in the U.S. Virgin Islands and at Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island, before shifting focus to Hawaii.<\/p>\n

Once initiated, it didn\u2019t take long for CIRCA to realize the role communities surrounding military installations played in defending against catastrophic events, according to Eisenberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoughly 50 percent of civilian and active-duty military personnel that work on installations don\u2019t actually live on the installation,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you can\u2019t treat the installation isolated from the communities in which they\u2019re embedded. MCBH will not be able to operate as it needs to if the communities surrounding it don\u2019t have food and water; it\u2019s just not going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2021, this fundamental concept rang true in another CIRCA project, one that played a pivotal role in emergency evacuation planning ahead of Hurricane Henri.<\/p>\n

For her NPS Operations Research graduate thesis, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Amanda Jones examined disaster preparedness of Naval Station Newport on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island. Her efforts were part of an 18-month Military Installation Resilience Review (MIRR), a collaborative effort between Naval Station Newport, the city of Newport, the U.S. Naval War College and the University of Rhode Island.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, Jones\u2019 work on the MIRR ended up being applicable much sooner than anyone anticipated when Hurricane Henri barreled towards the island in August 2021, becoming the first named storm to make landfall in Rhode Island in 20 years. Suddenly, CIRCA found itself informing the Newport base on best evacuation routes and preparation procedures before Jones\u2019 thesis was even published.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next thing I knew, it\u2019s Friday night at 11 p.m. and we\u2019re running the model and making a PowerPoint slide and brief, trying to interpret data to provide the emergency responders at the Navy base data for them to brief to the base commanding officer on Saturday morning about what might happen if the base has to evacuate,\u201d Jones recalled. \u201cIt was very satisfying to see my thesis, which wasn\u2019t even done yet, actually able to immediately be used in a real-life scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe three municipalities surrounding the installation had never really coordinated their evacuation plans with the base,\u201d Eisenberg added. \u201cThere are very few bridges; it\u2019s kind of a difficult planning scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLuckily, the storm turned away from being a direct hit at Naval Station Newport, but they used our assessment to guide their difficult decision-making and what their timeframes were,\u201d he continued. \u201cWorking with students to solve important, real problems is the most rewarding thing we do at NPS, particularly when we can have immediate impact on operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

For her work, Jones was awarded the Chief of Naval Operations Award in Operations Research.<\/p>\n

CIRCA projects necessarily involve coordination with myriad stakeholders, including military personnel, local and county government officials, state agencies and federal entities.<\/p>\n

That they have successfully done so is not accidental, Eisenberg said, but the result of the unique character of NPS.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that we\u2019re quasi-academic and quasi-government has been an important factor for our ability to even start the conversations that we\u2019re having,\u201d he said. \u201cThat we can wear both hats makes it so we can enter evolving social contexts and not be afraid to be a part of many difficult and quite varied conversations. We\u2019re an objective, educated third party that is just trying to help.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONTEREY, Calif. (July 18, 2023) The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are often called upon to respond to the worst of disasters, whether natural or man-made. Students and faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) are exploring different aspects of disaster preparedness and response, with their research being adopted by Navy and state emergency management […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":19499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19500,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19497\/revisions\/19500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}