by Brianna Crandall — October 30, 2020 — The Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) has just launched a new interactive web tool, the Technical Resilience Navigator (TRN), to help identify targeted resilience solutions to reduce the risk your facility faces when confronted with energy and water disruptions, such as those caused by a natural hazard or an unassociated third-party intervention. FEMP is part of the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
Technical Resilience Navigator (TRN)
FEMP’s Technical Resilience Navigator (TRN) helps organizations manage the risk to critical missions from disruptions in energy and water services. It provides a systematic approach to identifying energy and water resiliency gaps and developing and prioritizing solutions that reduce risk.
The TRN enables organizations to be proactive in identifying and addressing vulnerabilities to their critical energy and water systems to reduce outage impacts and support continuous mission operations.
The TRN’s unique focus on energy and water disruptions is intended to integrate with broader emergency preparedness, energy and water management, sustainability and security efforts, to strengthen the way those programs plan for energy and water resource availability. Completion of the TRN enables organizations to be proactive in identifying and addressing vulnerabilities to their critical systems, which can result in cost and waste reduction.
The Technical Resilience Navigator comprises seven modules, each with action items:
- Portfolio Planning
- Site Planning
- Baseline Development
- Risk Assessment
- Solution Development
- Solution Prioritization
- Project Execution
The TRN offers a step-by-step risk-informed approach to energy and water resilience planning. Working through this process helps the site build a detailed understanding of plans, priorities, and baseline conditions related to energy and water systems, and what types of gaps might expose the site to risk.
The TRN’s focus on energy and water systems requires an understanding of critical loads and the site’s ability to sustain those loads through a disruptive event. In addition to reducing risk, the TRN helps sites to identify and integrate related organizational priorities, such as sustainability, energy efficiency and cyber security, into the assessments and prioritization of resilience solutions.
Users can move through the TRN modules sequentially to conduct step-wise resilience project planning or can review sections independently for targeted outcomes. This modular approach to resilience planning allows users to build an institutional foundation from which they can conduct assessments based on their user experience and organizational knowledge.
The ultimate outcome of the TRN is a set of risk-informed, resilience-enhancing, actionable solutions that are prioritized based on the reduction of risk to a site’s critical loads, as well as other organizational and site priorities, and that enhance the ability to maintain critical missions in the case of a disruptive event.
For more information about the Technical Resilience Navigator (TRN) and to register, visit the FEMP website.
