The U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DOI) National Park Service (NPS) manages all U.S. national parks, most national monuments, and many other natural, historical, and recreational properties. At the George Washington Birthplace National Monument (GEWA) in northern Virginia, NPS recently completed a resilience assessment using the U.S. Department of Energy Federal Energy Management Program’s (FEMP) Technical Resilience Navigator (TRN) Lite.
GEWA encompasses 551 acres of land where seven generations of the Washington family lived and where former U.S. President George Washington was born in 1732. The monument was also central to one of the earliest efforts to memorialize George Washington during the celebration of his bicentennial birth anniversary in 1932.
In addition to the visitor center, the Memorial Area, and the Washington Family Burial Ground, the space also includes a picnic area and a public beach. Numerous recreational activities are available, including hiking, fishing, and birding. The site also hosts archeological research, a conference facility, and a museum.
Timeline
NPS and FEMP have had a long-standing partnership, formalized under a multiyear memorandum of understanding. NPS leadership was interested in seeing how natural hazard vulnerability studies conducted in recent years might be leveraged for additional purposes. The team first met in late July 2024, reviewed data through August of that year, and presented initial TRN Lite results in early September 2024. The NPS team continued to review and refine results in September and October 2024.
Results
Based on inputs, the TRN Lite identified the top three items driving risk in several categories, including natural hazards, critical loads and functions, and facilities. The top risk drivers will allow the NPS team to identify which areas should be prioritized.
The TRN Lite initially identified 15 solutions to address technological, operational, and institutional resilience gaps. Solutions included adding a new redundant system, increasing hardening to specific hazards, and enhancing the operational practices of specific redundant systems to ensure they could work when needed.
“I see high value in using this tool for project development. We have a lot of old infrastructure, and it’s helpful to know where to prioritize.”
–Scott Shea, GEWA facility manager
Lessons Learned
To help streamline the data input, an existing vulnerability analysis was leveraged, which contributed to the quick generation of outputs. This analysis was completed in July 2024, just a few months prior to the TRN Lite assessment, and incorporated valuable site information, like flood zones, facilities, infrastructure, hazards, and vulnerabilities. Many of the necessary fields of the TRN Lite were populated using the vulnerability analysis results and then refined by subject-matter experts. In cases where information was lacking, conversations with site personnel were conducted to fill any gaps.
Lynn Chan from the NPS Facility Management Division said, “It’s valuable for staff at the park level to be able to understand the tool’s inputs and outputs and to use them in an actionable way.”
The NPS team provided the FEMP team with valuable feedback after using the TRN Lite, including their interest in being able to model both baseline and future risk. This feedback has already been addressed with the release of new features in fall 2024. The NPS team also provided feedback on the tool’s useability and suggested other potential improvements the FEMP team will consider.