DoD Decision Making and Climate Change

10/20/2016

DoD Decision Making and Climate Change

SERDP and ESTCP have launched a webinar series to promote the transfer of innovative, cost-effective and sustainable solutions developed through projects funded in five program areas. The webinar series targets Department of Defense and Department of Energy practitioners, the regulatory community and environmental researchers with the goal of providing cutting edge and practical information that is easily accessible at no cost..

Presented October 20, 2016- Presentation Slides

Abstracts

“Vulnerability Assessments and Resilience Planning at Federal Sites” by Dr. Richard Moss

U.S. government agencies are now directed to assess the vulnerability of their operations and facilities to climate change and to develop adaptation plans to increase their resilience. Specific guidance on methods is still evolving based on the many different available frameworks. This presentation synthesizes lessons and insights from a series of research case studies conducted by the investigators at facilities of the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense. The presentation elaborated on three sets of methods required to project exposure to hazards, evaluate consequences, and manage effective communications. In addition, suggested elements of a roadmap to support agencies in preparing for climate change, including additional methods development and capacity building, will be provided.

“Decision-Scaling: A Decision Framework for DoD Climate Risk Assessment and Adaptation Planning” by Dr. Casey Brown

This presentation will describe and demonstrate a framework for assessing climate change risks to Department of Defense (DoD) installations and the built environment. The approach, which we call “decision-scaling,” reveals the core sensitivity of DoD installations to climate change. It is designed to illuminate the sensitivity of installations and their supporting infrastructure systems, including water and energy, to climate changes and other uncertainties without dependence on climate change projections. In this way, the analysis and results remain unclouded by the many choices and trade-offs required in the processing of projections from general circulation models (GCMs, also known as global climate models) and their associated uncertainties. The engine of analysis is the “climate stress test” which is an algorithm designed to stress the target system using systematic and exhaustive exploration of possible climate changes. The results showed clear answers regarding the climate risks at each installation in each of these sectors, in terms that are quantifiably comparable across sectors. A general framework for assessing climate risks to military installations, based on this methodology, were presented.

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Richard H. Moss is a senior scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, MD. His research focuses on the impacts of global environmental change and improving society’s resilience and capacity for risk management. He has focused on (1) uncertainty characterization and communication, (2) vulnerability and resilience and (3) scenarios for research and decision support. Dr. Moss has also published in the area of land use/cover change. He has held several public service positions including Director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program Office. He is the chair of the Federal Advisory Committee for the Sustained U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA) and the National Academy of Science's Board on Environmental Change and Society. He has served as a lead author, review editor, and in several leadership positions for the NCA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Dr. Moss received a Bacelor’s desgree from Carleton College in Northfield, MN, and M.P.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University in Public and International Affairs.

Dr. Casey Brown is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Prior to this, he led the water team at the International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate and Society at Columbia University. Dr. Brown’s research focuses on climate change, risk assessment and water resources, and he has worked extensively on projects around the world in this regard. Casey’s work is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation, NOAA, Department of Defense, World Bank and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He has a number of awards to his credit, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering, the National Science Foundation CAREER award and the Huber Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Dr. Brown has a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, a Master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering Science from Harvard University.