Weld County, Colorado
February 22, 2020
Utility Risk Assessment and Security Master Plan
February 9, 2020The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) continues to be actively engaged in natural disaster recovery throughout the Nation. USACE provides support to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during the initial stages of the hurricane recovery operations and USACE provides support to Congress relative to short and long‐term construction needs by preparing action plans and budgets and executing construction contracts in support of the reconstruction in and around the devastated area. As a sub-contractor to MOCA Systems, iParametrics provided analytical support and modeling to the Department of the Army for a Market Construction Cost Study of Hurricane Impacts on military construction programs.
SITUATION
The key objective of the study was to derive a process for considering the financial impact on programmed projects resulting from a hurricane and including those costs in the program budget.
TASK
Our task was to identify, analyze and model the key civil works and military construction cost elements as well as historical hurricane events to better understand the impacts that natural disasters have on military construction projects.
ACTION
The study utilized machine learning, advanced analytics and geospatial engineering to help DOD understand the hurricane price premium incurred for any region of the US based on various characteristics of a hurricane, the project location and current economic conditions. Our data collection and analysis process included qualitative empirical data collection from DOD construction experts and construction companies; quantitative objective data collection from recognized construction cost data bases; historical funding data from FEMA, SAS JMP statistical modeling to develop independent variables; machine learning to support feature engineering, cost modeling using the PACES parametric cost estimating model; and geo-analytical hazard modeling utilizing ESRI ArcGIS and the Qlik Analytics platform.
RESULT
iParametrics successfully developed a machine learning model to analyze the impact of disasters on military construction programs. The model utilizes new analytic processes to improve the accuracy and forecasts of the Construction Unit Price Hurricane Premium (CUP HP) for military construction programs. The project provides a process for military planners to consider the financial impact on programmed projects resulting from a hurricane and including that cost in the program budget.
“You’ve got to be setting some sort of new standard with your hurricane analysis. That should be a great boon to the cost community and a long-lived resource for many years. Plus—the graphics are really cool.”Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Environment and Installation Management)
