Author Description

"New and evolving U.S. Air Force missions are making mission success more dependent than in the past on installations in the continental United States and their assured access to energy. Mission-essential facilities and installations increasingly require access to electric power to provide mission assurance. A number of factors can interrupt the supply of electric power, including natural disasters, accidents, and deliberate interference. Susceptibility to these factors varies among installations. Recognizing the need to help individual installations assess risks and plan responses, the Air Force asked RAND to develop a framework that installations can use to assess their level of energy assurance. Drawing from prior work and interviews with numerous subject-matter experts and Air Force personnel, the authors define terms and metrics and describe the current electric power architecture on installations. They then present an analytic framework that enables mission owners and base civil engineers to assess possible gaps between capabilities and requirements at a given base under a range of scenarios. Appendixes provide supporting material and additional framework guidance, including a list of response options that installation energy planners could consider. While the focus is on the installation, the concepts are intended to be scalable, meaning that they can be applied to a single facility, an Air Force base, or a mission operation spanning multiple bases."--Publisher's description