anything there was to know about his museum. As I listened to some of the banter in the movie, I wished I had my own resilience curator. What would a curator have available for resilience seekers? Where would he start, and how would the information be organized? Those questions inspired me to build my own resilience library. Then, after seeing many available resources, I set about organizing my collection. It was then that I realized that the knowledge managers of the world play a critical role in our survival. Curators and librarians are heroes. Knowledge management heroes provide us with a venue to seek the answers to our questions. Sometimes they answer questions we did not even know we had. In an age where Google has become a verb, it helps to have somebody who can point you in the right direction. I set a goal to curate some of the gobs of energy resilience information that is out there. But I soon realized it was a massive undertaking. I am building the airplane while flying it. The upshot of that revelation is an understanding that there is always more available. If a toolkit can help one person find a resilience resource, it is worth the curating effort. Resilience information can be like a snowball rolling down a mountain. Each new information source is filled with references to other resources. The trick is to find the ones that make sense for you. This article describes some of the places to find your answers. PREPARING FOR DISASTER “Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.” — Oscar Wilde So what can we do to better prepare for disaster? How can we become more resilient? When one considers recent disasters, it is helpful to assess the experiences and teaching moments from a resilience framework: What worked out? What didn’t? Are there common preparatory actions that individuals and organizations can take to improve their ability to bounce back? I was intrigued by the idea that there should be a place where one can go to find the answers to these types of questions. So I did what any pilgrim would do at the start of a journey: I Googled “Energy Resilience Toolkit.” That action led to joy and frustration. Immediate joy came in the form of a resource called the “U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit,” managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office. Created in 2014, it frames resilience as a five-step process. NOAA recommends resilience seekers: 1. Explore Hazards: Identify the things that can cause you harm. 2. Assess Vulnerability and Risk: Determine the likelihood and impacts of harmful events. 3. Investigate Options: Develop potential courses of action to mitigate damage. 4. Prioritize and Plan: Evaluate the costs and benefits of your options. 5. Take Action! In addition to outlining their five steps for Climate Resilience, NOAA provides a useful list of references and some case studies. Maybe most importantly to some, NOAA provides a list of potential funding sources for improving resilience. While the focus is on climate, the approach applies to the closely related topic of overall energy resilience (NOAA, 2022). A good business practice is to find an organization that does what you do and benchmark it. The United States federal government is one of the best benchmark opportunities in the energy arena. The Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), hosted by the Department of Energy, provides a wide array of resources and training opportunities for energy resilience. FEMP has a large pool of experience to draw upon: “With more than 350,000 energy-utilizing buildings and 600,000 vehicles, the federal government is the nation’s largest energy consumer. Energy used in buildings and facilities represents about 40% of the total site-delivered energy use of the federal government, with vehicle and equipment energy use accounting for 60% of that energy. (FEMP, 2022) The FEMP team acts as a clearinghouse for information flow from all that experience. Mandated by law, the FEMP hosts utility working groups and various in-person and virtual events to share their knowledge. FEMP is just a few clicks away on your computer keyboard. The Department of Defense is a great place to find more narrowly focused energy resilience tools. The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment has a large library of references and guidance documents. The resources are generally rooted in a scary tenet from the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) that the homeland is not a sanctuary. The 2022 NDS promises more of the same, with the word “resilience” prominently featured in the DOD fact sheet about the new document. It makes sense that defense planners would value the idea of resilience. Type “OSD Energy Resilience” into your favorite search engine to find a summary of the Defense Department’s thoughts on the topic. You will also find a timeline showing the evolution of defense philosophy from “energy security” to “energy resilience” and beyond. Of course, if the OSD team has a philosophy about resilience, the individual armed services staffs feel the need to define it better. The U.S. Army has three documents that provide insights and strategic guidance for energy resilience. The first is the Army Climate Strategy, published in February 2022. The climate strategy outlines the service’s approach to adapting to the changing climate and pursuing greenhouse gas mitigation strategies. Their approach forms a nexus where initiatives like electric vehicles could both reduce impacts on climate change and provide a resilient power source for installations. 27
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