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DOE OSTI2020

Optimal Sizing of Resilience Solutions for the U.S. Army Reserve

Power or water outages in buildings threaten the ability of the military to support surrounding communities during natural disasters. Outages can last for days, weeks or months. Typical solutions include very expensive batteries and onsite generation that are sized based on historical power needs. The U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) has teamed up with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to develop a simulation framework that optimizes future power needs to reduce the cost of resilience solutions. The approach starts with the building. Power needs during an emergency event are simulated at the building end-use level, then loads are reduced through the selection of life cycle cost-effective building-level technology improvements. These new optimized loads are then fed into a microgrid sizing tool that dynamically constructs many different combinations of solar photovoltaic, battery storage, and generator resources to meet the load for hundreds of statistically generated outage scenarios. Six site assessments completed by USAR and PNNL in 2019 have resulted in a 1-14% reduction in overall investment when optimizing the buildings first before determining the generation requirements. This approach helps the Army secure critical missions and provide a 14 day-minimum supply of necessary energy and water in the most efficient manner.

buidlings, efficiency, resilience, FEDS, MCOR↗

DOE OSTI2021

Redefining Net-Zero Water for Resilient Aquifers

Groundwater has long been a critical source of potable water, supplying one-third of all global water withdrawals and providing strategic reserves in times of drought (Konikow, 2012; Famiglietti, 2014). The risk in relying on groundwater is that it is often pumped at rates far greater than it can be naturally replenished. With increasing population and a changing climate, the depletion of potable water supplies has become an ever-growing concern (Srinivasan et al., 2012). Recently, the concept of “resilience” has been applied to groundwater, leaving many questions to be explored in terms of what resilience should mean for aquifers (Foster and MacDonald, 2014; Grönwall and Oduro-Kwarteng, 2017). The term is commonly used to indicate resilience to impacts of climate change specifically, but here we consider resilience in the context of more general water insecurity. Relatedly, the concept of “sustainable yield” has emerged in an attempt to determine a metric that can ensure the long-term resilience of groundwater systems, but the definition is fraught with inherent uncertainties and its quantification poses challenges (Rudestam and Langridge, 2014; Grönwall and Oduro-Kwarteng, 2017). At the heart of these concepts is a focus on sustainable management of aquifers. A sustainable approach to managing groundwater resources usually involves balancing long-term abstraction with the long-term recharge taking into account the needs for environmental flows and implementing drought-preparedness measures (Robins et al. 2006; Foster and MacDonald, 2014). At a high level, a sustainable balance of groundwater abstraction versus aquifer recharge may be considered “Net Zero” (NZ) or “Net Positive” (NP) in cases where recharge is equal to or in excess of abstraction, respectively. However, NZ/NP water management programs that address these concerns have varied definitions of compliance, which include considerations for the application at hand (ILFI, 2020; USGBC, 2020). Locations with high risk of low or poor water supply may be particularly interested in pursuing NZ/NP water. The AQUEDUCT Water Risk Atlas (World Resources Institute, 2019) indicates long-term availability, providing risk levels for quantity and quality of water at specific locations across the globe, for existing and predicted future conditions. This paper follows the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) NZ water definition adopted by the U.S. Army for use at their installations, including Army Reserve Centers (ARCs). This definition also relates to the U.S. Army’s current focus on water resilience, which includes short-term and long-term availability of water resources.

net zero water, HUC12, Saipan, American Samoa, Mau↗

DOE OSTI2025

Optimizing Facility Operations by Applying Machine Learning to the Army Reserve Enterprise Building Control System (Final Report)

Thousands of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) buildings have building automation systems (BASs) and/or advanced meters. Although these systems have a wealth of data, performance optimization requires time and expertise to review and act on that information. Machine learning (ML) can provide automated and actionable insights to controls operators. This demonstration implemented proven ML methods on the Army Reserve Enterprise Building Control System. ML refers to algorithms that “learn” from data and improve their performance on a given task over time. In the buildings domain these tasks range from predicting future energy consumption, to identifying operational issues before faults occur, to optimizing control decisions. To learn, ML requires input data, which – for buildings – typically consists of instrument data such as energy consumption data and subsystem controls information such as set-point temperatures, and context data consisting of information such as the physical location of the building, the area of the building, and the weather. ML models use the relationships learned from the input data to make predictions with new, previously unseen, data. The team was able to investigate and successfully implement the following ML use cases: labeling consumption data as anomalous or non-anomalous; baseline whole-building load prediction (unknown fault status); fault detection (validation not possible); and site prioritization for energy-related projects. Due to the constraints of the project, interventions were not able to be implemented during the demonstration; therefore, assessments of operational cost savings and maintenance avoided could not be performed. The project has been presented at two leading national building conferences and two additional publications to peer-reviewed journals are currently in preparation.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2023

Prevalence of Self-Reported Bothersome Tinnitus in U.S. Army Soldiers From January 1, 2015, Through September 30, 2019

Purpose: Tinnitus is a symptom of auditory dysfunction or injury and can be a precursor to permanent hearing loss. Tinnitus can interfere with communication, sleep, concentration, and mood; when this occurs, it is referred to as bothersome tinnitus. Annual hearing surveillance in the U.S. Army includes screening for bothersome tinnitus. Estimating the prevalence of self-reported bothersome tinnitus can facilitate prioritization of prevention and education efforts. The objective of this study was to examine Army hearing conservation data to estimate the prevalence of self-reported bothersome tinnitus as a function of age, hearing, sex, service component, and pay grade. Method: The study employed a cross-sectional, retrospective design. Records from 1,485,059 U.S. Army Soldiers retrieved from the Defense Occupational and Environmental Health Readiness System–Hearing Conservation were analyzed. Descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression analysis were used to estimate the prevalence of bothersome tinnitus and its associations with Soldiers' demographic characteristics. Results: The estimated prevalence of self-reported bothersome tinnitus was 17.1% between January 1, 2015, and September 30, 2019; 13.6% of the Soldiers reported “bothered a little” and 3.5% reported “bothered a lot.” Proportionally, the prevalence of self-reported bothersome tinnitus was higher for males, older Soldiers, and Reserve Component Soldiers. For every 1-year increase in age, the odds of self-reporting “bothered a little” tinnitus relative to “bothered not at all tinnitus” would be expected to increase by 2.2% (2.1%, 2.3%), and the odds of self-reporting “bothered a lot” tinnitus relative to “bothered not at all” tinnitus would be expected to increase by 3.6% (3.5%, 3.7%). Conclusions: The self-reported prevalence of bothersome tinnitus in the U.S. Army (17.1%) is substantially higher than that of the general population, where prevalence of bothersome tinnitus is estimated at 6.6%. Examination of bothersome tinnitus among Soldiers is an important step toward optimizing prevention, education, and intervention efforts.

Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology↗