Engineer Research and Development Center - Environmental Laboratory

Risk and Decision Science Team

Compounding Threats 2

DESCRIPTION

Conceptualize and characterize the uniqueness of compound threats relative to system disruption, and where resilience fits in


Problem


  1. For installations, understand what resilience is, how it can be measured, and how it can be visualized.
  2. Extend knowledge of resilience to compounding threats. Benchmark threats, and understand/quantify how these threats yield harms to Army mission.
  3. Generate foundational knowledge on the causes, consequences, and interventions for compounding threats. Use this knowledge to identify interventions to generate Army installation resilience in a range of environmental and mission conditions.
A graphic divided with a vertical central blue dashed line. To the left is a pale blue field labeled Risk. To the right is a pale green field labeled Resilience. A black line begins as a straight horizontal line, then dips suddenly in a U shape finally continuing horizontally. This line is labeled Baseline Functionality at the beginning. The initial U shape is labeled High Resilience, a medium pink is used to label the right half of the U as it takes longer to recover, labeled Moderate Resilience. A final right section is in red in the U labeled Low Resilience. Beneath the U is the text in deep red Consequence to the Nation.

A bar graph with y-axis label Hazard Occurence Count (n = 3,114) with 0 at the origin to 200 in 50 point increments. The y-axis is Year from 2000 to 2020 in 5 year increments. The key is headed Hazard with the hazards represented: Flooding (peach), Fog (orange), Hail (Gold), Heat (light army green), Landslide (grass green), (Lightning (blue-green), SevereStorm/ThunderStorm (green-blue), SevereStorm/ThunderStorm/Wind (lighter blue), Tornado (bright blue), Wildfire (violet), Wind (red-violet), Wind/Winter/Weather (cool pink), and WinterWeather (warm pink). The bar graph shows hazards below 50 on average in 2000, but rather steadinly increasing to about 220 in 2011. 2016 had a dip then a dramatic increase in 2019. Two obvious changes include dramatic increases in Flooding and SevereStorm/ThunderStorm/Wind.

Solution

Are high impact events more likely to be attributed to cascading/compounding hazards than singular hazards?

A breakdown of threat occurrences over a study area, in this case a focus on Arizona showed the distribution of threats.


Impact

Better preparation in these study areas again specific threats associated with the area.