Webinar: Installation Resilience Tabletop Exercises for Military Communities

Department of Defense Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation sent this bulletin at 12/20/2023 02:45 PM EST

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U.S. Department of Defense Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation

January 9, 2024, at 2:00 PM EST/11:00AM PST

Microsoft Teams Webinar - Join the Webinar - Attendee link

The Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation invites you to learn more about Installation Resilience tabletop exercises to encourage collaboration across states, communities, and their local installations to effectively analyze, plan, and respond to natural and man-made threats.

A tabletop exercise can facilitate a threat-based scenario to "dry run" planned emergency response to disasters and catastrophic events. The goal is to validate that response actions on and off installation are executed effectively and identify gaps in hard and soft infrastructure that can be addressed. 

Once an installation-community team assesses the ability of military mission and public infrastructure owners to continue their missions in the face of attack or disaster, they can collectively identify opportunities for future projects to preserve and enhance mission resilience and assurance.

Join the City of Fairfield, California (Travis Air Force Base), and University of Rhode Island (Naval Station Newport) to learn how they used tabletop exercises to:

  • Develop scenarios and identify stakeholders,
  • “Ground truth” planned emergency responses,
  • Enhance decision-making across jurisdictions, and
  • Recommend actions to improve installation and community resilience.

Moderator:

  • Margit Myers, Installation Resilience Program Activity Lead, Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation

Speakers:

  • David Gassaway, City Manager, City of Fairfield, California
  • Anna Guiles, Assistant to the City Manager, City of Fairfield, California

An Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation Installation Resilience grant is enabling the City of Fairfield, California, to study the regional infrastructure supporting Travis Air Force Base in relation to the installation and surrounding communities' resilience to public safety power outages, wildfires, extreme drought, and other natural and man-made threats, such as high winds. The project is providing insights into the vulnerabilities of critical assets needed to maintain the operability of the military installation, maintain a vibrant economy, and provide a livable community for those in the surrounding areas. These insights will be used by local government entities, in cooperation with installation leadership, to prioritize investments to protect and enhance these assets.

  • Austin Becker, PhD, Director, Graduate Certificate in Coastal Resilience, University of Rhode Island

An Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation Installation Resilience grant enabled the City of Newport, Rhode Island, in concert with surrounding local communities and the University of Rhode Island, to conduct a resilience study and recommend mitigation strategies. The study addressed increasing concerns related to super storms, flooding, and sea level rise, impacting Naval Station Newport and the surrounding area which owns infrastructure that supports the installation. In addition, the effort improved community coordination and developed a state-adopted model for evacuation planning at differing categories of storm severity.