Base Camp Quality of Life Standardization and Improvement

The United States (US) Army has over 66,000 soldiers engaged in contingency operations across the world. Current budgetary constraints and an uncertain global security environment require these operations to be executed as efficiently as possible. Base camps are the secured areas where soldiers live when deployed to contingency operations. Base camps impose a significant financial and tactical burden during contingency operations and sub-optimal soldier quality of life decisions have significantly contributed to costs. Quality of life (QOL) refers to the non-security and non-mission related services that directly sustain the mission effectiveness of soldiers. Current US Army base camp tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) do not sufficiently specify QOL services, and more detailed doctrine should be developed to support combat units executing contingency operations. In this investigation we employ quantitative methods to select decisions that improve QOL and inform doctrine. We leverage a QOL function and resource consumption data developed by US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center's (Natick Labs) to build a model that improves QOL under the constraints of four fundamental resources: fuel, water, waste water, and solid waste. We employ a mixed integer linear program modeling approach and execute sensitivity analysis to evaluate the strength of our results. Our final model is formulated as a chance constraint optimization to address the uncertainty associated with resource availability in contingency operations. Our results provide QOL decisions that reduce resource consumption while maintaining an equivalent QOL level when compared to current TTPs. The model provides quantitative rigor, informing decision makers of specific base camp design principles for the development of doctrine.