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Presentation Slides

Abstracts

“Technologies Supporting Design, Maintenance, and Operation of Linear Infrastructure on Seasonally Frozen and Thawed Terrains” by Dr. Tom Douglas (NH22-7408) 

This presentation will focus on work with U.S. Army Alaska soldiers and training land managers and other federal and state agencies to support design and operation of six unique linear infrastructure types managed by the DoW in Alaska. These include summer roads, drop zones, and firebreaks; all-season roads; low-water stream crossings; ice bridges; winter roads; and fens. These infrastructure types are at high risk of environmental degradation to fragile ecosystems, have uncertain applicability with current permafrost degradation, and may pose risks to soldier safety. This project synthesized best practices and developed standard operating procedures for siting, design, and safe operation of linear infrastructure common on training lands in Alaska and other high-latitude locations. The project also used remote sensing and geophysical measurements to study permafrost thaw degradation at a large drop zone near Fort Wainwright in Alaska. A series of maps were developed that identify the thaw risk of permafrost on Fort Wainwright managed lands (1.5 million acres). Finally, the project also synthesized information on potential usage of airfields across Alaska and Greenland for a variety of aircraft. Project results were synthesized into seven open-access technical reports.

“Identifying Infrastructure Resilience Gaps for Cold Regions Installations and Communities” by Ms. Margaret Kurth (NH23-7787) There are increasing challenges for designing, building, and sustaining infrastructure in cold regions installations and their surrounding communities. Installations in cold regions need to enhance their ability to address the resilience of military infrastructure and obtain a comprehensive understanding of risk to mission critical functions. A coupled community-installation understanding of threats to missions via infrastructure is emphasized in a newly developed approach which seeks to identify resilience gaps. To develop a systematic assessment, the project draws upon existing approaches and data on projected hazards, a fundamental resilience assessment framework, and intra- and inter-dependencies between infrastructure systems and installation capabilities. This assessment focuses on specific installation and surrounding community infrastructure exposed to unique and compounding threats in cold regions environments. This presentation highlights the restructuring of existing tools that are applicable to installation resilience assessment, such as the Mission Dependency Index (MDI) and Mission Assurance Resilience Matrix (MARM), with modifications addressing not only asset management concerns, but also other dependencies to include the surrounding communities in cold regions. A new method to calculate a resilience return-on-investment will also be shared. 

Speaker Biographies 

Dr. Tom Douglas is a Senior Scientific Technical Manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) at Fort Wainwright in Alaska. His research is focused on characterizing permafrost, snow, and ice through all-season field surveys, geophysical measurements, and remote sensing. His projects support training in land management and maneuvering, help design and operate a variety of infrastructure, and provide insights into changing Arctic terrains. He has participated in multiple 1,000-kilometer wintertime traverses across the Alaskan Arctic, has field sites across Alaska, and has also worked in Canada, Finland, Sweden, and Greenland. Dr. Douglas is an author or co-author of more than 160 scientific papers and book chapters. He currently serves as co-lead of the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee Risks and Hazards team and is the U.S. lead for the Environmental Working Group of the International Cooperative Engagement Program for Polar Research. He received a master’s degree in geology from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and a doctoral degree in earth sciences from Dartmouth College. 

Ms. Margaret Kurth is a research environmental engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) as a practitioner of risk and decision science. Over the past few years, Margaret has been working to advance the concept of resilience into practice across a wide diversity of domains and disciplines with a particular focus on infrastructure systems. She works closely with domain expert modelers to formulate resilience such that it can enter into analysis, and, as an objective, be traded off with others (i.e., balanced with risk reduction, efficiency, and other objectives). Margaret’s other research interests include water management, risk communication, and ecosystem restoration. She received a bachelor’s degree in natural resource management from Cornell University and a master’s degree in environmental and water resource engineering from Tufts University.