Scalable and Replicable Watershed Resilience Evaluation

The objective of this program is to develop replicable, customizable processes, along with methods and tools to measure resilience and conduct resilience assessments across communities in a watershed scalable to the application across the Nation. Reconciling community needs and methodological gaps should result in methodological advancement. An understanding of the interdependencies of individual projects to achieve critical functions in support of watershed objectives is of paramount importance. This work will address specific threat scenarios acting on individual vulnerabilities of specific communities and multiple compounding threats acting at watershed-wide scale. This work will interface with and possibly be combined with efforts being developed by ERDC as a part of technology transfer to others to customize and use. This project will include the delivery of products in a form that may be included in a playbook for watershed jurisdictions to customize and replicate.

Objective 1:

Develop methodological toolbox for resilience quantification and decision support for watershed-level mitigation efforts.

For this objective, ERDC will conduct field-campaigns to collect data on critical functions that are applicable to watershed-level mitigation efforts. The recipient/awardee will use the supplied data in analyses to identify interdependencies and vulnerabilities for development of a methodological toolbox for resilience quantification and decision support for water-shed level mitigation efforts. For consistency, the assessment should coincide with existing ERDC published work in resilience and, as such, should focus on the Resilience Matrix, an organizing framework on three phases of resilience (absorb, recover, adapt) against three domains of resilience (physical, information, social).

Activities associated with Objective 1 will include the following: (i) process to identify and prioritize the critical infrastructure in local community and watershed levels; (ii) an analysis of the most vulnerable critical infrastructure to all forms of threats (primary focus in the Savannah River Basin); (iii) an assessment of the supply and demand of critical functions supported by the highest priority infrastructure in the watershed; (iv) replicable process to conduct an analysis of interdependencies across primary functions and infrastructure in the basin; (v) methods and tools to conduct a consequence assessment of critical functions at the local and watershed level; (vi) a screening tool to visualize vulnerabilities on potential failures of critical infrastructure; (vii) process to apply screening tool applications in a collaborative setting between public and private stakeholders.

Objective 2: Support the development of collaborative approaches to build a shared vision of resilience, scalable to all levels of a watershed.

This objective will advance research activities focused on the development of decision support tools to connect local priorities with challenges across the watershed for scalable watershed resilience. Similar to Objective 1, ERDC will collect data and provide the data to the recipient/awardee use in complex analyses. The analyses will result in a deliverable that describes the methods and tools needed to prioritize decisions in the watershed in a way that will enhance resilience.

Activities associated with Objective 2 will include the following: (i) methods for identification of objectives and priorities in the watershed; (ii) assessment of priorities across the watershed to identify potential areas of conflict and synergy in the basin; (iii) methods to help communities identify and leverage government resources; (iv) process to generate and articulate scenarios for collaborative decision-making decision support tools; (v) development of serious gaming 'sim city like' applications to run scenarios against potential resilience strategy alternatives. .