Engineering topics

Olson, Jarrod

Publications and source records attributed to Olson, Jarrod.

4 records

DOE OSTI2018

CERF – A Geospatial Model for Assessing Future Energy Production Technology Expansion Feasibility

Electricity system expansion planning faces significant challenges not only because of commonly modeled uncertainties such as future demand growth, fuel prices, and technology cost and performance, but also because of challenges such as climate change and carbon policies that can affect supply and demand. Changes in energy technology, natural resource availability, and population migration and growth will affect the feasibility of power plant siting, potentially hindering the achievement of policy goals. New modeling approaches are needed that couple future projections of energy system expansion with “on the ground” feasibility modeling—where both are informed by a consistent set of assumptions about future climate trends, resource availability, climate policy, socioeconomics, and environmental regulations. This research describes the development and evaluation of the Capacity Expansion Regional Feasibility (CERF) model, a geospatial tool for scenario analysis of electricity system expansions.

grid expansion, water-energy nexus, power plant si↗

DOE OSTI2015

Policy and Technology Readiness: Engaging the User and Developer Community to Develop a Research Roadmap

A key challenge for research roadmapping in the crisis response and management domain is articulation of a shared vision that describes what the future can and should include. Visioning allows for far-reaching stakeholder engagement that can properly align research with stakeholders needs. Engagement includes feedback from researchers, policy makers, general public, and end-users on technical and non-technical factors. This work articulates a process and framework for the construction and maintenance of a stakeholder-centric research vision and roadmap in the emergency management domain. This novel roadmapping process integrates three pieces: analysis of the research and technology landscape, visioning, and stakeholder engagement. Our structured engagement process elicits research foci for the roadmap based on relevance to stakeholder mission, identifies collaborators, and builds consensus around the roadmap priorities. We find that the vision process and vision storyboard helps SMEs conceptualize and discuss a technology's strengths, weaknesses, and alignment with needs

policy readiness↗

DOE OSTI2014

Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future: Modeling Social Unrest in Karachi, Pakistan

Social unrest represents a major challenge for policy makers around the globe, as it can quickly escalate from small scale disturbances to highly public protests, riots and even civil war. This research was motivated by a need to understand social instability and to unpack the comments made during a spring 2013 conference hosted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Center for Global Security and the U.S. Institute for Peace, where policymakers noted that models considering social instability are often not suitable for decision-making. This analysis shows that existing state level models of instability could be improved in spatial scale to the city level, even without significantly improved data access. Better data would make this analysis more complete and likely improve the quality of the model. Another challenge with incorporating modeling into decision-making is the need to understand uncertainty in a model. Policy makers are frequently tasked with making decisions without a clear outcome, so characterization of uncertainty is critical. This report describes the work and findings of the project. It took place in three phases: a literature review of social stability research, a “hindsight scan” that looked at historical data, and a “foresight scan” looking at future scenarios.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2011

Developing a Regional Recovery Framework

Abstract A biological attack would present an unprecedented challenge for local, state, and federal agencies; the military; the private sector; and individuals on many fronts ranging from vaccination and treatment to prioritization of cleanup actions to waste disposal. To prepare the Seattle region to recover from a biological attack, the Seattle Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) partners collaborated with military and federal agencies to develop a Regional Recovery Framework for a Biological Attack in the Seattle Urban Area. The goal was to reduce the time and resources required to recover and restore wide urban areas, military installations, and other critical infrastructure following a biological incident by providing a coordinated systems approach. Based on discussions in small workshops, tabletop exercises, and interviews with emergency response agency staff, the partners identified concepts of operation for various areas to address critical issues the region will face as recovery progresses. Key to this recovery is the recovery of the economy. Although the Framework is specific to a catastrophic, wide-area biological attack using anthrax, it was designed to be flexible and scalable so it could also serve as the recovery framework for an all-hazards approach. The Framework also served to coalesce policy questions that must be addressed for long-term recovery. These questions cover such areas as safety and health, security, financial management, waste management, legal issues, and economic development.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗