Designing Resource-Efficient Military Base Camps From a Holistic Perspective

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has recently shown an interest in incorporating resource efficiency into decision-making processes, including decisions that pertain to Forward Operating Military Base Camp (FOB) equipment. Often deployed in environments without access to grid utilities, FOBs require costly deliveries by land or air of resources such as fuel and fresh water. Resource-efficient FOB designs have the potential to reduce supply costs, but competing objectives and uncertain operational conditions complicate the design process. For example, integration of solar photovoltaic panels into existing designs has the potential to reduce the need to burn fuel in generators, however solar panels have up-front logistical and monetary costs that limit widespread use. There are also uncertainties associated with available solar energy and camp electrical loads. The research described here uses computer modeling and simulation of a real FOB subsystem under different operational scenarios to develop configurations of solar panels and batteries that, when integrated with an existing FOB design, maximize resource savings but minimize logistical and monetary costs, showing the benefit of a holistic design strategy that accounts for scenario variation. This research will also show that while different hardware configurations prove most efficient under different scenarios and objectives, certain hardware configurations provide good performance under all scenarios and objectives.