Developing water resiliency solutions at military installations

Abstract

Climate change, along with rising human water demands, has been projected to raise the vulnerability of available water resources and poses further risks to global water security. A challenge of this century will be to secure enough fresh water for the world’s increasing population. U.S. Army installations provide critical support to Army’s mission. Army facilities face many risks which must be overcome to ensure that vital missions continue. Installation Energy and Water Plans (IEWPs) comprise one pivotal effort to ensure that facilities maintain access to the resources they need and can meet resilient solutions to maintain water supplies to sustain the people and environment. An essential component of the IEWP is the development of potential solutions, or courses of action (COAs) to address deficiencies that can improve an installation’s baseline condition, ensuring energy and water (E&W) security and resiliency. The undertaking seeks to improve security and resiliency by considering the varied threats of disruption within installations and providing measures for adaptable recovery. These disruptions include environmental events, droughts and climatic events, spills, and water security threats. Increasing energy and water resiliency aims to maintain that Army’s mission is successfully carried even if sources of water are cut off or compromised. The objective of this paper is to document water resiliency improvements in military installations by applying priority facilities demand estimation planning tools and reviewing courses of action and also providing lessons learned and tools that could be utilized for planned communities or city-based water management efforts. The IEWP process empowers stakeholders to improve military readiness through state-of-the-art solutions for enhanced security, resiliency, and mission assurance. These methods and use of standardized data sets could be pursued to be applied towards a broader scope of stakeholders to improve water resiliency for cities, communities, and industries outside of the military.