Analyzing Heat-Related Injuries at Fort Moore

Heat-related injuries (HRIs) are a significant problem for the US military. Hyperthermia (i.e., abnormally high body temperature) leads to heat injuries due to extreme environmental temperatures, high humidity, medications, or excessive physical work or exercise. Fort Moore has the most heat-related injuries. We used data from Fort Moore’s Heat Center with an initial dataset of 2723 observations for 2017–2022. Despite the concerning rise in heat-related injuries, current research investigating the causes and implementing statistical approaches for decision-making within the military remains limited. This research aims to address this gap. Our methodology involves conducting an exploratory analysis to identify conditions under which heat-related injuries occur during Army training events. Subsequently, we developed predictive models to estimate the probability of a training event resulting in a heat stroke. The potential benefits of the research would be to better utilize statistical methods to tailor decision-making guidelines, leading to more effective reduction of heat-related injuries compared to existing guidelines. In the future, we hope to receive data that contains the health and conditioning of the soldiers who experience a heat-related injury. We believe this would provide more insights into heat-related injuries during military training.