An Enterprise-Wide Look at Department of the Air Force Installation Exposure to Natural Hazards
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Research Report C O R P O R A T I O N ANU NARAYANAN, MICHAEL J. LOSTUMBO, KRISTIN VAN ABEL, MICHAEL T. WILSON, ANNA JEAN WIRTH, RAHIM ALI Grounded: An Enterprise- Wide Look at Department of the Air Force Installation Exposure to Natural Hazards Implications for Infrastructure Investment Decisionmaking and Continuity of Operations Planning For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RRA523-1. About RAND The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. To learn more about RAND, visit www.rand.org. Research Integrity Our mission to help improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis is enabled through our core values of quality and objectivity and our unwavering commitment to the highest level of integrity and ethical behavior. To help ensure our research and analysis are rigorous, objective, and nonpartisan, we subject our research publications to a robust and exacting quality-assurance process; avoid both the appearance and reality of financial and other conflicts of interest through staff training, project screening, and a policy of mandatory disclosure; and pursue transparency in our research engagements through our commitment to the open publication of our research findings and recommendations, disclosure of the source of funding of published research, and policies to ensure intellectual independence. For more information, visit www.rand.org/about/principles. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © 2021 RAND Corporation is a registered trademark. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication. ISBN: 978-1-9774-0670-5 Cover image: Staff Sgt. Ryan Conroy/U.S. Air Force Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. Preface In recent years, some very costly storms have motivated consideration of possible resiliency investments to Department of the Air Force (DAF) installations, a number of which face exposure to flooding, high winds, and wildfire hazards. This report provides a data-driven approach that the DAF could use to identify installations that are exposed to these three hazards and highlights a set of installations that merit a closer look. The presented analysis should be viewed as a first step toward more thoroughly cataloging installation exposure to natural hazards, rather than as a definitive or comprehensive assessment. This report discusses the challenge of formulating enterprise-wide policies regarding this complex and potentially expensive problem, compares policy options for handling the high winds hazard, and provides an approach for evaluating the suitability of backup operating locations that considers co-vulnerability to natural hazards of alternate operating locations. The research reported here was commissioned by the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Engineering and Force Protection (AF/A4), and conducted within the Resource Management Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE as part of a fiscal year 2020 project entitled “Basing and Resilience,” which sought to assess the implications of natural hazards to installations and identify options to mitigate the effects. This report should be of interest to installation planners, those who allocate funding to installations and infrastructure, and operators and mission owners responsible for continuity of operations plans. RAND Project AIR FORCE RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF), a division of the RAND Corporation, is the Department of the Air Force’s (DAF’s) federally funded research and development center for studies and analyses, supporting both the United States Air Force and the United States Space Force. PAF provides the DAF with independent analyses of policy alternatives affecting the development, employment, combat readiness, and support of current and future air, space, and cyber forces. Research is conducted in four programs: Strategy and Doctrine; Force Modernization and Employment; Manpower, Personnel, and Training; and Resource Management. The research reported here was prepared under contract FA7014-16-D-1000. Additional information about PAF is available on our website: www.rand.org/paf/ This report documents work originally shared with the DAF on August 12, 2020. The draft report, issued on September 15, 2020, was reviewed by formal peer reviewers and DAF subject- matter experts. iii Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................................... iii Figures ............................................................................................................................................ vi Tables .......................................................................................................................................... viii Summary ......................................................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... xi Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Overview of Natural Hazards Included in This Report ............................................................... 5 Flooding ................................................................................................................................... 5 Wildfires .................................................................................................................................. 7 High Winds .............................................................................................................................. 8 Organization of the Rest of This Report ...................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2. A Base-Level View of Exposure to Natural Hazards .................................................. 10 Data and Methods ...................................................................................................................... 11 Installation Boundaries .......................................................................................................... 16 Flood Exposure Data Sources ................................................................................................ 17 Wildfire Exposure Data Source ............................................................................................. 21 Wind Exposure Data Source .................................................................................................. 23 Findings ..................................................................................................................................... 24 Exposure to Current Flooding ............................................................................................... 24 Exposure to Future SLR ........................................................................................................ 28 Exposure to Wildfire ............................................................................................................. 32 Exposure to High Winds ........................................................................................................ 34 A Multi-Hazard View of Installation Exposure .................................................................... 35 Discussion and Limitations ....................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 3. Exposure of On-Base Assets and of Areas Outside the Base ...................................... 42 Data Sources .............................................................................................................................. 42 Airfield Assets from NGA AFD ............................................................................................ 43 Electric Power Infrastructure Assets and Buildings from GeoBase ...................................... 43 Current Flooding and Projected Future SLR-Induced Inundation ............................................ 44 Current Flooding .................................................................................................................... 44 Projected Future SLR-Induced Permanent Inundation .......................................................... 48 Wildfire ...................................................................................................................................... 50