DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYZING THE RESILIENCE OF FORWARD EXPEDITIONARY PORT REFUELING INFRASTRUCTURE

Abstract

The U.S. Navy (USN) relies on ports to enable operations and project power, but many of our ports remain vulnerable to attack and natural disaster. To manage future conflict, the USN must plan for port resilience and develop resilience-enabling technologies that support ship refueling operations. We develop a framework and model capable of studying refueling at ports before and after disruptions. Our framework adapts standard tools for discrete event simulation of ship arrival and refueling, and we demonstrate its use for a simple port. Our methods also enable the analysis of resilience technologies currently being developed by the USN. We study two USN technologies: one enables fast port recovery, and the other enables extended port operations but does not speed up recovery. We find both technologies capable of providing resilience to ports in their own unique ways. Based on our analysis, we provide recommendations for how the USN should deploy both technologies, which enables efficient acquisition and port resilience.