The Growing Exposure of Air Force Installations to Natural Disasters

Abstract

Recent natural disasters have underscored the vulnerability of Air Force installations to natural hazards. In 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base (AFB)experienced a direct hit from Hurricane Michael, causing $4 billion worth of damage. Flooding at Offutt AFB in 2019 damaged buildings, runways, and other assets. A wildfire near Vandenburg AFB delayed a scheduled rocket launch and endangered two space launch pads. These incidents have prompted the Department of the Air Force (DAF) to examine how to improve AFB resilience to natural hazards. To reduce the exposure of these installations to the threat of disasters, the DAF asked RAND's Project AIR FORCE to assess base-level exposure to flooding, wildfires, and high winds and identify potential mitigation options. The analysis combined geospatial and other asset-level information with national hazard data for each base. The approach demonstrates how an enterprise-wide view of installation exposure to natural hazards can inform a variety of policy decisions.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2021
Accession Number
AD1149458

Entities

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Engineered Resilient Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Air Force Facilities
  • Climate Change
  • Corporations
  • Disasters
  • Electric Power
  • Flood Hazards
  • Floods
  • Geographic Distribution
  • Hazards
  • Hurricanes
  • Infrastructure
  • Intellectual Property
  • Natural Disasters
  • Power
  • Public Policy
  • Resilience
  • Risk
  • Sea Level
  • Sea Level Rise
  • Storm Surges
  • Wildfires

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering.
  • Aerospace logistics and air mobility.
  • Emergency Management and Homeland Security.

Technology Areas

  • Space