Planning for the Climate Crisis

In 2018, a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico changed rapidly into a Category 5 hurricane that devastated Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City, Florida. A few months later, a catastrophic flood in the Missouri River basin completely inundated Offut Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska. In 2019, Hurricane Florence similarly devastated Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina (requiring repair and replacement programs of $1.2 billion and $1.7 billion, respectively) while an earthquake caused significant damage to Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California and forced it to temporarily shut down operations. What makes these events notable is their rapid development and intensity, indicative of the magnitude of the peril and cost of such disasters.

In this informative discussion, Atkins Federal Planning Director Lawrence Frank joins Federal Business Director J.R. Steele to talk about what the Department of Defense can do to plan for extreme weather events, as well as how a resilience planning decision support framework can help installations protect their facilities and the soldiers and staff who rely on them to defend our nation and improve our quality of life.

City Simulator, a community focused tool developed by Atkins that allows communities to create digital twins of their buildings, roads, utilities, natural areas and other assets and then measure how resilient they are through a 30-year simulation.

Executive Order 14008, an executive order issued by U.S. President Joe Biden on January 27, 2021 prioritizing the climate crisis in U.S. foreign policy and national security considerations.