Solutions were sought to improve the overall management of water resources, infrastructure and assets to ensure a reliable, secure and clean supply of water to support military installation operations. As water resources are becoming increasingly stressed in parts of the United States and around the world, understanding water requirements and improving water management is critical for mitigating water-related risk to installation operations and improving water resilience.

Of particular interest were solutions that include the following capabilities:

• Advances in Installation Water Planning as part of the comprehensive installation Master Planning process.
• Low-cost and efficient metering and analytical approaches to improved understanding of facility and end-use water demand for improved water management.
• Efficient integration of data sources to inform water resilience planning over various time-horizons.
• Cost-effective approaches for replacing, upgrading, and re-using existing water infrastructure (including distribution systems, storage tanks, hydrants, etc.) to enable holistic solutions for efficient water, graywater, and wastewater systems.

Solutions should consider complexities associated with control systems cybersecurity and handling of controlled unclassified information (CUI).

Water resilience solutions will help the Department ensure a reliable, secure and clean supply of water to support military installation operations and improve Master Planning outcomes that result in climate-informed capital investments.

The DoD has installations in various climates and geographical areas with different topographies. Many of these locations face increasing water stress due to increased frequency of droughts, wildfires, and other extreme climate events. These increased water threats lead to competition for water resources across different needs and missions. Also, the DoD’s aging water infrastructure poses an additional threat to ensuring reliable water supply. The Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Section 2827 “Water Management and Security on Military Installations” requested DoD installations develop a joint methodology to evaluate water risk associated with water sources, aging infrastructure, drought impacts, and evaluation of existing water metering and consumption at the military installations. To increase understanding of installation energy and water use, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) issued an updated utilities meter policy in January 2021, promoting maximum use of advanced metering technologies, prioritizing all mission-critical and water-intensive facilities.

The DoD Services have emphasized the growing importance of water in their efficiency and resilience policies and planning activities. The Army Directive 2017-07 requires Army installations to prioritize energy and water security requirements and ensure the supply of energy and water to critical missions for a minimum of 14 days during a disruption. Services have deemed planning for water as important as energy, if not more, as part of their Installation Energy Plans (IEP). The IEP is a holistic planning roadmap of installation guidance, strategic plans, and policies to achieve energy and water efficiency and resilience. As part of the IEP process, installations need to determine existing water resources, infrastructure, uses, deficiencies, and needs to establish baseline conditions. The baseline data and critical mission requirements are then used to develop water needs requirements for critical mission sustainment. However, insufficient metering makes it hard to accurately develop baseline data and effectively plan for mission needs.