National Defense & Security
The Department of Defense manages the largest single environmental water-contamination portfolio on the planet — on the order of 700 PFAS-impacted installations identified and growing under NDAA-mandated investigation. Too many sites. Unequal in risk and value. Finite congressional appropriations. No path to depth-everywhere. Every dollar spent on a low-risk site is a dollar not spent on a high-risk one. MAGNET4WATER is built for the multi-tier, multi-scale work this scale of program management requires — on the engines federal science already endorses, with the security architecture defense procurement requires.
NDAA 2023 mandated PFAS investigation at every DOD installation. Roughly 700 impacted sites have been identified to date, with the inventory still expanding. Cleanup cost projections run into the tens of billions of dollars. Triage is the only viable response at this scale.
MDL 2873 (Aqueous Film Forming Foam multidistrict litigation). 3M $10.3B settlement precedent. EPA's April 2024 CERCLA designation of PFOA/PFOS as hazardous substances. The liability framework has fundamentally changed — and the methodology defending DOD positions has to keep up.
The DOD Climate Action Roadmap requires installation-specific climate vulnerability analysis. Sea-level rise at coastal bases. Drought at western training ranges. Riverine flood at low-elevation installations. The National Defense Strategy frames climate as a national security threat — doctrine, not discretion.
Oldsmar 2021. Aliquippa 2023. IRGC-linked attacks on US water utilities through 2024. CISA Water Sector advisories are active and frequent. Water infrastructure is now an explicit target — not a hypothetical scenario.
Indo-PACOM operations across water-limited Pacific environments. European theater operations where water-infrastructure dependency is both vulnerability and necessity. Modern contingency operations have made water analysis a logistics constraint at the speed of decision — not a planning-cycle exercise.
Hundreds of former DOD sites remain in active environmental restoration. Overseas bases in Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the UK require coordinated work under SOFA environmental provisions — with host-nation regulators applying their own frameworks alongside CERCLA.
No conventional consulting model scales to a portfolio of this size. The infrastructure that supports DOD's water program cannot be six different consulting firms in nine different cities producing twelve different file formats.
What Sets MAGNET Apart
Four architectural decisions specific to managing a global water-contamination and infrastructure portfolio at defense scale.
The DOD scale problem, addressed structurally.
700+ PFAS sites. Unequal in risk and value. Finite appropriations. No path to depth-everywhere. The only viable response is a multi-tier, multi-scale framework operating on two axes: vertically across depth of analysis (screening → intermediate → deep, same engine at every level) and horizontally across the portfolio (consistent methodology from one site to thousands). MAGNET4WATER is this infrastructure — not a single-site modeling tool used at portfolio scale.
Federal-standard engines. Throughout.
USACE ERDC is the largest single MODFLOW user globally; IGW-NET wraps the same MODFLOW 6 engine. EPA SWMM (FEMA-approved for the NFIP) is in StormNET. EPA EPANET drives ConduitNET. USDA SWAT runs SwaNET. Plus MT3DMS, MODPATH, SEAWAT, T-PROGS, UCODE. The engines the federal science establishment built, validated, and uses — not proprietary alternatives whose acceptance requires a separate fight at every site.
Anywhere on Earth, in minutes, from a browser.
A preprocessed hierarchical global base model covers the entire planet — aquifer geometry, surface-water network, monitoring wells, LiDAR terrain where available. Any installation in any combatant command's area of responsibility is a starting point, not a data-collection delay. A program manager in CONUS, an environmental officer in Europe, a contingency-operations planner in the Pacific — all can launch a working base model from a browser. No installation required.
Confidential computing. FedRAMP-aligned. Air-gappable.
Hardware-attested confidential computing keeps sensitive analysis encrypted in memory during model execution — inaccessible to hypervisors, infrastructure operators, or any process outside the enclave. Organization-managed encryption keys, closed observatories, dedicated infrastructure options, air-gapped deployment paths. The security architecture defense procurement requires — on a platform engineers actually want to use.
A DOD installation is a full water system: source through distribution through wastewater through discharge. Each MAGNET platform handles its domain on a federal-standard engine — coupled through documented handoffs of physically-meaningful quantities.
MAGNET4WATER is an analytic infrastructure for water modeling. It supports DOD environmental program management, installation vulnerability assessment, litigation defense, and contingency-operations water analysis on federal-standard engines and a security architecture aligned with defense procurement requirements. It is not a classified operational planning system. It does not replace IL-6 systems, intelligence-community platforms, or tactical command-and-control infrastructure. What it adds is the multi-tier, multi-scale modeling environment that the DOD environmental and installation-management portfolio has been missing — on engines federal science already endorses, deployable in confidential-computing modes that satisfy procurement scrutiny.
Configured for installation commanders and program leadership — at every level of technical depth.
Two DSS modalities, connected. Physics-based: IGW-NET, SwaNET, StormNET, and ConduitNET take federal-standard models, your calibration, and your installation data — then generate the derived layers your decisions actually need (climate-vulnerability rankings per installation, PFAS source attribution for AFFF litigation, capture-zone updates as monitoring data arrives). Data-driven: DataNET fuses those derived layers with your raw operational data, federal background, and live telemetry into one observatory view. Model is data, data is model.
Three layers of data, fused. Background data — USGS NWIS gauges, regional aquifer characterizations, NOAA climate, satellite remote sensing, host-nation data services — is already there for most installations; the observatory pulls it in by default. Your on-site data — installation lithologies, monitoring well logs, CERCLA records, AFFF inventories, DoD-CARMA assessments — sits alongside as a first-class layer once configured. Live telemetry — continuous monitoring wells, SCADA, sensor networks — streams into the same view and updates the observatory in real time.
Spatial and temporal dynamics, merged. Static maps don’t show when problems emerge; static time series don’t show where. The observatory fuses both — telemetry traces against the 3D capture-zone surface, monitoring-well anomalies pinned to their installation, climate-vulnerability projections evolving year by year across a 30-installation portfolio. Pick a point on the map, see its history. Pick a time, see the system state. Pick an anomaly, see what changed and where. The fused 3D immersive view shows the system dynamics that no single data layer reveals — and that’s where defensible decisions emerge.
For a modeler, the computational steering interface is a DSS. Steer the calibrated model, see the system, decide. For an installation commander or program lead, the same platform is configured differently: experts (HydroSimulatics or your existing environmental contractors) calibrate the underlying models and integrate your data; the DataNET observatory surface is what you see — role-scoped, browser-accessible, air-gappable for classified work. Your data stays where it is — DataNET’s federation layer reads through access controls you authorize, no replication, no copies pulled out of your environment.
Standing up the DSS is configuration work, not magic. Part of what consultants and partners do is standardize your heterogeneous data formats (drilling logs, lab reports, SCADA exports, GIS shapefiles, monitoring-well telemetry) into the observatory’s structure and expose them as services so new data flows in automatically rather than via manual reload. Once configured, the observatory self-updates: new telemetry readings arrive, new derived layers from the physics platforms refresh, your view stays current. You configure once; you decide every day after.
Portfolio decisions the DSS answers:
- Of 700 PFAS-affected sites, which 60 need deep modeling next quarter?
- Which installations face the highest 2050 climate-water vulnerability under DoD-CARMA?
- For an AFFF-litigation expert opinion, which monitoring wells matter for source attribution?
- Where does the cyber-physical threat scenario actually intersect with base distribution?
- Is our installation-by-installation remediation moving the regional balance — or are we just moving the problem?
Honest framing: experts configure the DSS; commanders and program leads use it. The methodology underneath every screening decision stays federal-standard. Hire deeper consulting for the work that warrants it — do triage and screening yourself for everything else.
Pain Points & MAGNET Solutions
NDAA PFAS investigation at portfolio scale
MAGNET: Multi-tier multi-scale framework on federal engines. Screen the entire portfolio at consistent depth using the global preprocessed base; refine high-risk installations with hierarchical submodels; deploy site-specific capture-zone and plume analysis where the risk warrants it. One methodology from 1 site to 700+, defensible at every tier — the architectural pattern the EGLE $30M and Allegan 351 case studies have already demonstrated at state government scale.
AFFF litigation defensibility
MAGNET: MODFLOW 6 + MT3DMS reactive transport + MODPATH particle tracking for capture-zone and source-attribution analysis — on USGS engines that survive any cross-examination. T-PROGS heterogeneous-K realizations for fracture-controlled and karst geology where homogeneous-aquifer models fail. The HydroSimulatics courtroom track record (Mika Meyers PLC groundwater contamination outcome) is on the same architecture.
Installation climate vulnerability under DOD CARMA
MAGNET: CMIP6 downscaled climate scenarios force SwaNET watershed hydrology and StormNET flood analysis. IGW-NET projects source-water sustainability under specific climate pathways. One model, multiple scenarios, defensible methodology — supporting the climate vulnerability assessment CARMA requires and the MILCON business case the resilience funding depends on.
Cyber-physical threat scenarios
MAGNET: ConduitNET models distribution-network contamination pathways, time-to-detection, and recovery sequencing. IGW-NET handles source-water contamination scenarios. Enterprise tier with hardware-enforced confidential computing protects sensitive scenario libraries. Closed observatories enable AWIA-compliant analysis without exposing the scenario library to the broader internet.
Forward operating environment water analysis
MAGNET: The global preprocessed base covers the entire planet. Any geography is a starting point. Launch a working water model of any operating environment in minutes from a browser; share the model securely with downrange units; iterate scenarios as conditions evolve. The modeling environment goes to the mission — not the other way around.
BRAC and overseas base cleanup
MAGNET: The same architecture that supports US-CONUS investigation runs equally in any geography on the global base. CMIP6 climate forcing is global. The federated data fabric pulls host-nation monitoring networks alongside USGS data. One methodology across BRAC sites, current installations, and overseas footprint — defensible under multiple regulatory frameworks simultaneously.
Strategic Value
For DOD environmental program managers, installation commanders, and defense environmental services contractors, the architectural commitments translate into three dimensions: mission assurance — water infrastructure resilience and contamination analysis that support operational readiness on the timeline operational planning actually runs on; liability defensibility — federal-standard methodology surviving CERCLA, NDAA reporting, AFFF MDL litigation, host-nation regulatory frameworks, and the case law that is still being written; and portfolio-scale program management — the multi-tier, multi-scale architecture that lets one organization manage hundreds of sites with consistent methodology, with consistent documentation, with consistent defensibility.
When Michigan EGLE replaced site-by-site contracting with a unified MAGNET deployment for statewide wellhead protection, the documented savings reached approximately $30M — with methodology consistency across every community water system. The same architectural pattern, applied at DOD scale, addresses a portfolio one to two orders of magnitude larger.
Proven for Federal-Scale Work
Three deployments demonstrating the architectural patterns the DOD environmental program faces: portfolio-scale statewide work, portfolio triage methodology, and courtroom defensibility.
$30M
Michigan EGLE
Statewide wellhead protection across community water systems — the operational pattern federal program management runs on
351
Allegan County
Sites risk-prioritized in <1 year — portfolio triage methodology directly analogous to DOD PFAS portfolio management
Courtroom
Mika Meyers PLC
Visual evidence supporting groundwater contamination outcome — analytic architecture directly applicable to AFFF MDL defense
Managing a global installation portfolio where PFAS, contamination, climate vulnerability, and infrastructure decisions must be made across thousands of sites — and where only some warrant deep analysis, but every one requires defensible methodology? The strategic argument for why the water-resources digital transformation moment is now is the same argument behind the DOD environmental program: the multi-tier, multi-scale framework is the only viable response at this scale.
Read: The Inflection Point →