Assessing Natural Hazard Risks to Department of State Posts Overseas
GAO-23-105452, October 18, 2022
In 2020, State established a Climate Security and Resilience program to develop new processes to assess natural hazard risks and proactively identify, plan, and implement natural hazard adaptation measures to U.S. posts abroad, such as U.S. embassies and consulates. State identified eight natural hazards for its assessment: coastal flooding, riverine flooding, tsunami, earthquake, water stress (lack of access to drinking water), extreme heat, extreme wind, and landslide.
As of May 2022, State conducted an initial assessment of its 294 locations around the world in terms of the total risk these natural hazards pose to posts' ability to carry out their missions. These scores are based on posts' unique characteristics which determine exposure to certain hazards, the potential severity of a hazard should it occur, and posts’ vulnerability to disruption from a hazard.
How to Interact With This Map
Total risk score represents the overall risk assessed for each post for all hazards combined. Post locations include a list of high risk hazards, as applicable. Use the radio buttons to filter posts to see those at higher risk for each of the eight individual hazards. Click on any point on the map to see specific information about the post location.
Source: GAO analysis of Department of State documentation. | GAO-23-105452
Notes: These scores represent State's initial assessment of the risk natural hazards pose to its specific facilities and properties in these locations, as of May 2022. These scores do not represent an assessment of natural hazard risk to the geographic areas or regions in which State operates. Additionally, State officials told us that this risk assessment is iterative in nature and that they intend to continue to refine and update the assessment.
State has built new facilities since 2000 for some posts, such as a new embassy compound, new consulate compound, or new office annex. Such facilities are built to meet State's design standards, such as adhering to modern seismic codes to afford protection from earthquakes. According to OBO officials, such building design aspects have not been factored in to the risk scores represented in this map as such, posts having a newly-constructed embassy, for example, may still appear as high risk despite the code-mandated adaptation/risk mitigation measures that have been implemented. The risks calculated by OBO also do not take into account (1) city or regional mitigation measures completed, under construction, or planned by host locales, or (2) risk-mitigating projects completed, under construction, or planned by OBO.
Certain limitations exist to data collected and utilized by OBO for use in its risk assessment. For example, exposure data for natural hazards differed in years for which data was available. For a description of these limitations, see enclosure II in our report.
The list of State overseas missions is derived from the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) real property database. According to OBO, the term "post" refers only to properties in which State has real property interest and is not intended to imply operational status or purpose of a particular property. U.S. missions to international organizations are listed when the overseas mission includes properties that are distinct from the primary State post in that location. When the primary State post and the mission to an international organization have shared assets (e.g. a shared residential complex), the assets are all listed under the primary State post.
The American Institute in Taipei and American Institute Branch Office in Kaohsiung provide services to U.S. citizens and visas to Taiwan nationals similar to services provided by State at U.S. embassies and consulates in other countries.
Total risk scores reflect the combined potential risk to disruption to a post from any of the eight hazards identified. Individual hazard risk scores reflect the potential risk of that particular hazard to a post. Learn more about how these scores were calculated in our report.
For more information, read our report, GAO-23-105452.