After the Hurricane: Validating a Resilience Assessment Methodology

Abstract With increasing utility grid outages in the United States, there is growing interest in assessing risk and developing mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of grid outages. Working with the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) developed a replicable energy resilience assessment methodology and investment decision tool to: (1) identify and score hazards and vulnerabilities at the site level; (2) analyze risks to energy infrastructure; and (3) identify and prioritize energy resilience investments. This work improves on existing resilience assessment methodologies and tools by combining a bottom-up, all-hazards assessment methodology with top-down geographic information system mapping capabilities to provide an innovative, dynamic tool for identifying and prioritizing actionable solutions. This process combines probabilistic forecasting with an iterative approach for continuously updating and reassessing risks to address temporal dynamism. Relationships among systems are modeled and visualized to estimate the effectiveness of resilience actions across multiple interdependent systems and inform financial priorities through cost-difficulty-impact trade-offs. The approach is validated in a case study at Tyndall Air Force Base (AFB) in Florida, which experienced a Category 5 hurricane in 2018. The risks and mitigation strategies identified pre-hurricane are compared with post-hurricane, realized impacts. The assessment effectively identifies risks and actions to increase site energy resilience, but the methodology can be enhanced though greater consideration of the interdependencies between the energy system and related systems like transportation, communication, and food/water systems, which impact the recovery of the energy system and the base.