Given increasing threats of extreme weather events, facility planners and policymakers need state-of-the-art information that projects long-term environmental risk and informs how these events may alter the replacement schedules and the performance profiles of individual facilities and their constituent systems and components. The BUILDER Sustainment Management System—the lifecycle management tool used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to consistently and comprehensively assess and forecast facility conditions—does not currently consider vulnerability to extreme weather events. This project will develop an application programming interface (API) plug-in for BUILDER that allows users to visualize weather event projections and re-prioritize infrastructure maintenance and/or replacement schedules, and assess costs, according to the likelihood and severity of these events with and without adaptive response scenarios.

This Weather Effects on the Lifecycle of DoD Equipment Replacement (WELDER) project will involve working closely with partners at DoD organizations and demonstration sites to design, test, and deploy a capability-enhancement module to BUILDER that will enable users for the first time to produce high-spatial-resolution extreme weather projections, along with metrics communicating the likelihood of impacts. WELDER will alter BUILDER component degradation curves—by changing component/system/facility condition indices and lifespans—according to region-specific extreme weather scenarios, their likelihood, and any potential adaptive responses. WELDER will generate alternative Work Action reports—with estimated costs—that are re-prioritized given the likelihood of extreme event threats, possible impacts to facilities (and components within), and plausible facility, system, component, and/or equipment-level adaptation scenarios. The project team will deem this effort to be successful if (1) DoD site partners are actively involved in—and enthusiastic about—the initial design, testing, and deployment of WELDER and (2) the technology produces extreme weather likelihoods, generates alternative Work Action reports, and communicates equipment repair/replacement cost scenarios that can be aggregated for a wide range of stakeholders. 

WELDER will help users make informed decisions about facility sustainment, restoration, and modernization activities under different extreme weather and adaptive response scenarios. WELDER will also provide policymakers with the ability to aggregate the costs of these repair and replacement activities—under different threat and response scenarios—to the system-, facility-, site-, and DoD service-level. This will help decision makers achieve the goal of a more resilient, cost-efficient, and productive portfolio of facilities.