Kelly Klima

Counting the Costs: Improving Disaster Recovery Cost Estimation

Estimating the cost of disasters is a complex process. Disaster recovery is complicated even further during this new era of COVID-19, when extra precautions must be taken. How can we estimate costs quickly and reliably, thus improving the flow of dollars back into the community?

Report

How Can DoD Compare Damage Costs Against Resilience Investment Costs for Climate-Driven Natural Hazards? Overview of an Analytic Approach, Its Advantages, and Its Limitations

This report assesses methods to compare the damage costs from climate change-related extreme weather events against the costs of investing in U.S. Department of Defense installation resilience.

Report

Emerging Technology Beyond 2035: Scenario-Based Technology Assessment for Future Military Contingencies

This report presents the development and implementation of a technology assessment process to help the Army understand the implications of key emerging technologies that could be important for Army missions in the years 2035 to 2050.

Report

Adaptive Engagement for Undergoverned Spaces: Concepts, Challenges, and Prospects for New Approaches

This report is a compendium of expert insights regarding opportunities for investing in science and technology to increase U.S. ability to engage in long-term competition in undergoverned spaces.

Report

Assessing the Effectiveness of Future Concepts in the U.S. Air Force: Application to Future Logistics Concepts

RAND researchers present a Future Logistics Concept Assessment Framework, which is a disciplined, systematic way to assess proposed future logistics concepts to meet the requirements of the National Defense Strategy.

Journal Article

A Multicity Analysis of Daytime Surface Urban Heat Islands in India and the US

Satellite data and various spectral indices are used to predict surface heat. Built-up indices used in the U.S. do not differentiate sparse vegetation and built-up surfaces, and thus fail in India.

Report

Equity Metrics for Climate Adaptation in the Electricity Sector

Social equity has become a key concern among public agencies. The authors developed an illustrative set of context-specific equity metrics that Southern California Edison could build on and incorporate into its ongoing work toward climate adaptation.

Report

Developing Metrics and Scoring Procedures to Support Mitigation Grant Program Decisionmaking

To develop metrics that can inform decisionmaking for awarding predisaster mitigation grants, the authors established three lines of effort (LoEs) for analysis. Each LoE produced a metric or framework that could support grant decisionmaking.

Journal Article

The Measurement of Disaster Recovery Efficiency Using Data Envelopment Analysis: An Application to Electric Power Restoration

This paper considers disaster severity to assess efficiency for electric utilities. We provide an application to recent post-hurricane restoration activities across different electric power companies in the states and territories of the United States.

Report

A Model of the Spread of the COVID-19 Pandemic During a Hurricane in Virginia

The threat of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic increases the complexity of risk management decisions during the hurricane season. This report examines the implications that a hurricane during the pandemic would have for Virginia.

Journal Article

Health Effects of Heat Vulnerability in Rio De Janeiro: A Validation Model for Policy Applications

Here we investigate how to construct and validate a heat vulnerability index given uncertainty ranges in data for the city of Rio de Janeiro. We find that we can validate the heat vulnerability index against excess deaths during heat waves.

Journal Article

Fossil Fuel–Fired Power Plant Operations Under a Changing Climate

In this analysis, we used a power plant modeling tool to study how a variety of power plant configurations respond to varying meteorological conditions.

Report

The Risk-Mitigation Value of the Transportation Worker Identification Credential: A Comprehensive Security Assessment of the TWIC Program

The Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) is designed to enhance security at U.S. ports. This report provides the findings from an assessment of the TWIC program, along with the assessors' recommendations.

Report

Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence: Ethical Concerns in an Uncertain World

The authors of this report examine military applications of artificial intelligence (AI); compare development efforts in the United States, China, and Russia; and consider the ethical implications of employing military AI in war and peace.

Research Brief

How the U.S. Coast Guard Can Leverage Social Media and Enhanced Cell Phone Data to Improve Emergency Response

Researchers are helping the U.S. Department of Homeland Security understand how social media might be better leveraged for situational awareness—particularly location information—in U.S. Coast Guard response operations.

Report

U.S. Coast Guard Emergency Response and Disaster Operations: Using Social Media for Situational Awareness

Researchers are helping the U.S. Department of Homeland Security understand whether and how social media might be better leveraged for situational awareness in U.S. Coast Guard response operations.

Journal Article

Effective Game-Based Training for Police Officer Decision-Making: Linking Missions, Skills, and Virtual Content

This paper reports the result of a two-year pilot study that developed a framework for implementing low-cost, game-based, virtual reality technology for training police officers to improve their decision-making under stress.

Journal Article

Culture and Cognition: Understanding Public Perceptions of Risk and (In)Action

This model demonstrates how cognitive structure, cultural schema, and environment awareness could be combined to improve risk communication. Case studies: one on decision makers facing extreme heat, and another on homeowners facing flood events.

Journal Article

Creating a Water Risk Index to Improve Community Resilience

We demonstrate two methods to combine water hazard data with a derived water vulnerability index to characterize water risk. We then compare the costs of two potential government policies: buyout of the home versus funding for foundation elevation.

Journal Article

Performance Comparison of Solar Photovoltaic Models for Plant Siting in India

India will add 100 GW of solar electric power generation by 2022. This report examines the performance of four annual solar photovoltaic production models against actual generation data from utility-scale plants in Gujarat, India.

Journal Article

Geographic Smoothing of Solar Photovoltaic Electric Power Production in the Western USA

We examined the geographic smoothing of solar photovoltaic generation from 15 utility-scale plants in California, Nevada, and Arizona and from 19 commercial building installations in California.

Journal Article

SUCCEED: Summer Center for Climate, Energy, and Environmental DecisionMaking

Conference paper describing an annual summerschool held at Carnegie Mellon University that was started by Kelly Klima.

Journal Article

Surface Heat Assessment for Developed Environments: Optimizing Urban Temperature Monitoring

A variety of metrics are used to optimize the placement of temperature measures to best support decision-making for monitoring and responding to extreme heat risk. This optimal sensor placement methodology is demonstrated for Pittsburgh.

Report

Estimating the Global Cost of Cyber Risk: Methodology and Examples

This report shares a transparent and adaptable methodology for estimating present and future global costs of cyber risk. The report has a companion Excel-based modeling and simulation platform that allows users to alter assumptions.

Journal Article

Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty: Climate Change and Infrastructure Management

This chapter very briefly addresses issues and approaches to decision making on adaptation to climate change.

Journal Article

Hidden-Model Processes for Adaptive Management Under Uncertain Climate Change

This paper proposes a set of optimization procedures based on the Markov decision process (MDP) framework to support decision making depending on the assumed learning rate.

Journal Article

Preparing For Local Adaptation: A Study of Community Understanding and Support

We surveyed 1385 Pittsburghers on: (1) beliefs and knowledge about stormwater, (2) drivers of events, (3) support for green and gray infrastructure, and (4) the factors that explain their support.

Journal Article

Surface Heat Assessment for Developed Environments: Probabilistic Urban Temperature Modeling

We describe how fine resolution simulations of historic extreme heat events are generated and used to train a probabilistic spatio-temporal model of the temperature distribution in an urban area.