A Hotter and Drier Future Ahead – An Assessment of Climate Change in U.S. Central Command

Speakers: Dr. Michelle Miro, Dr. Flannery Dolan, Karen Sudkamp, & Jeffrey Martini (RAND)

Date: 9 May 2024

Speaker Session Summary

Forthcoming!

Speaker Series Recording

Also forthcoming!

Briefing Materials

Report: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2338-1.html

Biographies: Dr. Michelle Miro is a senior information scientist at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She has a broad portfolio of work across climate resilience and adaptation for critical infrastructure, with a focus on the water sector. Her research supports international, federal, and local emergency, infrastructure, and resource management agencies with climate adaptation, disaster resilience and recovery, and water resources planning. Miro has methodological expertise in water resources modeling, climate data analysis, remote sensing, geospatial analysis, machine learning and decision making under deep uncertainty (DMDU). Her projects include climate risk analyses of national critical infrastructure, climate vulnerability analyses of water supply and demand plans in Southern California and South America, groundwater management in urban and agricultural regions, transboundary water management under a climate change, and extreme precipitation impacts and planning under a changing climate. She also serves as a co-investigator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Mid-Atlantic Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (MARISA) Climate Adaptation Partnership (CAP). Miro co-led the development of Puerto Rico’s water sector recovery plan following Hurricanes Irma and Maria. She holds an MS in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Flannery C. Dolan is an environmental engineer and hydrologist at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She focuses on understanding the interlinkages and feedbacks between the human and natural systems. Broadly, she is interested in long-term planning under uncertainty given multiple objectives in complex adaptive systems. Her current portfolio of work assesses the impacts of climate change on the federal budget, financial risk, and national security. She has methodological expertise in integrated assessment modeling, climate data analysis, water resources modeling, and decisionmaking under deep uncertainty (DMDU). She holds a B.S. in geophysics and an M.S. in hydrologic science and engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from Tufts University.

Karen M. Sudkamp is an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations (IISO) Program, part of the RAND Homeland Security Research Division, a management scientist, and a professor of policy analysis at Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her research focuses on the geopolitical implications of climate change; infrastructure security of the U.S. food system; migration and refugees; extremism, terrorism, and counterterrorism; disaster response and recovery; Middle Eastern politics and society; and a variety of Intelligence Community issues. Her recent research includes understanding the risks of disruption of the U.S. food system due to public health emergencies like COVID-19 and climate change, the impact of including gender perspectives in Department of Defense operations, how to reduce both civilian harm during conflict and radicalization in refugee communities, and how climate change may impact the physical environment and security environment. Sudkamp spent twelve years at the Defense Intelligence Agency as an all-source senior intelligence analyst for Middle East and counterterrorism issues. She provided intelligence support to all levels of the defense enterprise, including four deployments in support of active military operations to multiple positions on the Joint Staff. Sudkamp received her B.S. in International Politics from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, her M.A. in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College, and her MBA and M.A. in Food Studies from Chatham University.

Jeffrey Martini is an associate director of the Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program, part of the RAND Arroyo Center. He is also a senior international defense researcher at RAND, where he analyzes the impact of U.S. military activities, and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He has written operational histories, analyzed the deterrent impact of military modernization and new military deployments, and assessed the efficacy of security cooperation. He also has a specialty in political and security issues in the Middle East. Martini has published on Arab Gulf security, Syria stabilization, civil-military relations in Egypt, and generational divides within the Muslim Brotherhood. Martini spent four years living in the Arab world, including three as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco and one in Cairo, Egypt, where he was a 2007–08 fellow in the CASA Arabic language program. He speaks, reads, and writes modern standard Arabic and speaks Moroccan and Egyptian colloquial. Martini received his M.A. in Arabic studies from Georgetown University and his B.A. in political science and economics from Middlebury College.