The Technical Resilience Navigator (TRN) takes a risk-informed approach to resilience planning with the intent of helping sites identify and reduce risk related to energy and water disruptions. Risk assessment identifies and characterizes the three components of risk: hazards and threats, vulnerabilities, and potential consequences. Risk is the potential for an unwanted outcome resulting from a hazard or threat, referred to as a “risk scenario.” This is quantified by the likelihood of the risk scenario (based on the hazard and threat and vulnerabilities) and the associated consequences (severity of impacts). The following equation is used to quantify risk:

Risk=Hazards and Threats x Vulnerabilities x Consequences

Risk assessments expose gaps between baseline conditions and a more resilient end state, helping the resilience planning team identify opportunities for improvement and their relative importance.

The TRN Risk Assessment module creates a streamlined approach to understanding risk to critical missions at a site. The consequence modeled is the outage duration of a critical load beyond the duration that’s tolerable by the mission. Within the TRN, risk scenarios explicitly address numerous factors within site control, such as design, maintenance, automation, and procedures for onsite redundant power and water systems. However, other factors are implicit in the model, including factors that are outside the control of the site, such as power grid quality issues, and factors that would require a much more detailed risk model, such as adequacy of staffing levels. These implicit risk factors do affect risk and should be considered in the Solution Development module, even though they cannot be tested directly within the TRN risk model.

The TRN Risk Assessment module uses two types of resources to guide users through the methodology: a set of worksheets (online or downloadable Microsoft Word) and a risk screening tool (online tool or downloadable Excel workbook). Offline users may want to refer to the TRN Resource: Risk Assessment Process Flow Overview to see the relationship and suggested flow for using both sets of downloadable resources to best effect. In each action, the user will be guided through completing the worksheets before data entry into the risk screening tool. For those working offline, please note that references to tabs from the Risk Assessment Excel workbook are in orange.