Karishma V Patel

The expanding commercial space industry offers new opportunities--such as technological advances, lower launch costs, and innovative satellite applications--that could help the U.S. military meet mission requirements more efficiently. RAND researchers evaluated two commercial space markets to understand opportunities and risks that the Department of the Air Force could encounter when making decisions to invest in commercial space capabilities.

Based on the premise that investing in hazard risk mitigation will reduce spending on recovery and response, the federal Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program recognizes that equity issues are important in helping communities? mitigation efforts. Researchers identified ways to address these issues while enhancing the accuracy of natural hazard assessment in future BRIC grant decisionmaking, as described in this report.