Accounting for Climate Resilience in Infrastructure Investment Decisionmaking: A Data-Driven Approach for Department of the Air Force Project Prioritization

Abstract

Force, and conducted within the Resource Management Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) as part of a fiscal year 2022 project, "Building Resilience to Natural Hazards."In fiscal year 2020, RAND PAF conducted analysis that provided an enterprisewide view of the Department of the Air Force's (DAF's) installation exposure to natural hazards. 1 That project's research outputs included an initial characterization of the exposure of continental United States DAF installations to a select set of hazards, an approach to compare the costs of proactive investments in infrastructure resilience with costs of rebuilding postdisaster, and a method for considering hazard seasonality in continuity of operations planning. That work did not address related questions of how to identify projects that might improve installation resilience, how to characterize the resilience benefits afforded by proposed projects, and how to compare those benefits across projects to inform the prioritization process.This project builds on that prior effort to support these needs and aims to improve the DAF's ability to prioritize installation projects that would enhance resilience to climate-driven natural hazards. DAF infrastructure planning and resourcing processes do not explicitly account for climate resilience. This report provides the DAF with a structured framework for screening infrastructure projects based on their potential climate resilience value so that investment decisions may credibly and systematically consider climate-related risk and resilience at the enterprise level. We hope that this work will be of use to those in the DAF who support installation planning efforts, requirements identification and project submissions, project prioritization, review and validation, and resource allocation.