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There are almost no words to describe the massive path of destruction left by Hurricanes Helene and Milton in Florida and the Southeast over the past month. News footage of splintered homes being swept away by rushing floodwaters and fractured roads leading nowhere are difficult to comprehend. Unfortunately, climate scientists predict these images will become more prevalent as the Earth’s warming climate continues to churn out extreme weather events.

The total cost to replace and repair homes, businesses, and infrastructure like roads and bridges in Florida and the Southeast is estimated to be in the billions of dollars. Facing that reality is daunting enough for individual homeowners. But what is the impact of such destruction on companies and government agencies with multiple buildings and their own infrastructure? Are these entities financially prepared to repair several demolished buildings in the wake of a horrific natural disaster? What’s the long-term impact of extreme winds and temperatures on equipment like heating and cooling systems, roofs, and windows?

These are the questions Christina Patricola, associate professor in the Department of the Earth, Atmosphere, and Climate, and a group of interdisciplinary scientists and engineers from across the nation addressed in their recent study, “Weather effects on the lifecycle of U.S. Department of Defense equipment replacement,” published in the journal Building and Environment earlier this year. The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP).

Thinking about facilities maintenance differently

For this study, the researchers focused on the large building portfolio of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) across the 48 contiguous states. The team maintains that understanding the elevated risks to buildings and equipment from extreme weather events will help large organizations better plan for the rising costs associated with long-range facilities maintenance and replacement.

Currently, the DoD uses the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s BUILDER Sustainment Management System to assess and forecast facility conditions to support maintenance, repair, and recapitalization decisions. However, BUILDER currently has no way to assess infrastructure vulnerabilities that might arise from extreme weather events.

The study’s climate services team, led by Patricola, calculated a suite of extreme weather metrics in historical and future climates. In addition, the engineering project team developed a damage association matrix, or DAM. DAM categorizes climate hazards, the types of damages those hazards produce, and the individual building components that are impacted. The matrix then applies the building-component risks to a specific facility to effectively compute potential risks or damages. Finally, the software project team developed an application programming interface, or API plug-in, for BUILDER called the Weather Effects on the Lifecycle of the U.S. Department of Defense Equipment Replacement (WELDER), which uses the extreme weather metrics and the DAM.

“We calculate future changes in extreme weather based on climate model simulations and translate it to estimate how much certain components of a building are expected to be impacted,” Patricola said. “If you were to take a curve that is the percent of life remaining in a building component over time, the percent of life left could decrease by a certain amount. The rate of depreciation might be faster depending on which component is involved and which aspects of climate change impact it.”

Always be prepared

Patricola says it’s important for organizations with large building portfolios, like the DoD, to be prepared for future extreme weather conditions.

“One of the things that’s likely to happen as climate changes and extreme weather events become more intense and/or more frequent, is that it will translate into costs,” she said. “Building components may fail more quickly. It could be an abrupt failure from destruction, but there’s also the gradual wear and tear on components, like an HVAC (heating, ventilation and cooling) system. The more hot and cold days you have, the more it’s going to tax the system.”

By having tools like WELDER, weather metrics for a future climate, and the damage association matrix, Patricola says the DoD will be able to determine which building systems need to be maintained or replaced more frequently and, therefore, anticipate those additional costs.

“The idea behind this study is that we want people to have the information they need to prepare for potential climate change,” she said. “It’s especially challenging to be taken by surprise or to have your structure taxed so badly that it fails. It’s a bit easier in terms of impacts on communities or facilities if the infrastructure is brought up to the new typical climate conditions to avoid a total disaster.”

Next step

Patricola says the research team has shared their study’s final report with the DoD, which provides the best possible information for them to determine how to proceed. However, the researchers are moving forward with Phase II of the study, which has three primary objectives – to include Alaska, Hawaii, and other global locales into the geographic mix, add climate and weather metrics that are more difficult to predict, and include data from more climate models.

With everything she knows about the changing climate, Patricola is hard pressed to predict which areas of the United States are least likely to be impacted by extreme weather events.

“It’s hard to say that any place is guaranteed to be safe,” she said. “It’s more about which types of extreme weather events we have to worry about in a certain location.”