Assessment Services
You do not need to become an expert to get started. FIR will assess your community’s critical infrastructure, score it across three resilience vectors, and deliver a complete planning suite — so your leadership can make informed decisions with real data, not assumptions.
The Fresh Start Assessment — Free
FIR’s Fresh Start Initiative provides a no-cost, no-obligation infrastructure resilience assessment for any U.S. community. A certified FIR assessor loads your community’s actual data from federal databases — substations, water treatment plants, hospitals, pipelines, demographics — traces the dependency chains, scores your posture across all three vectors (Cyber, Physical, EMP/GMD), and delivers a complete document suite your leadership can act on immediately.
Cost: Free. No contract. No obligation. No sales pitch.
What Your Community Receives
The Fresh Start assessment produces a 12-document planning suite generated from your community’s actual infrastructure data — not generic templates.
Executive Summary
One-page briefing for elected officials and senior leadership. Three-vector score card with stockpile modifier. Top five priority actions. Designed to be read in five minutes and acted on in the next council meeting.
Threat Posture Assessment
Community-specific threat environment drawing from FIR’s three-volume threat series, localized with demographic, geographic, and infrastructure data. What the Four-Party Ecosystem means for your specific community.
Infrastructure Dependency Map
Interactive map showing every substation, water plant, hospital, pipeline, and communications tower serving your community — with dependency chains traced. Which substation powers the water plant? Which pipeline feeds the hospital generator?
Three-Vector Scorecard
Independent maturity scores for Cyber, Physical, and EMP/GMD with a single days-of-supply modifier. Baseline assessment against the Diamond Blue target architecture. Your starting point on all three tracks.
Gap Analysis
Every item in the Diamond Blue checklist scored as achieved, partially achieved, or not achieved — across all three vectors. The delta between where you are and where you need to be.
CI Sector Analysis
Sector-by-sector assessment of your community’s 16 critical infrastructure sectors organized in the six-tier dependency model. Where your cascade failures will begin and how fast they propagate.
Phased Roadmap
Three parallel improvement tracks — one per vector — with phased actions from current state to Diamond Blue. Each phase includes responsible parties, evidence requirements, cost estimates, and phase gate criteria.
Grant Funding Navigator
Every roadmap action mapped to its eligible federal grant program. FEMA BRIC, DOE Grid Resilience, USDA Community Facilities, EPA water infrastructure, OLDCC for base-adjacent communities. Disadvantaged community scoring advantages documented. Written in program-native language.
Training Plan
Who in your community needs which FIR training, in what sequence, on what timeline. Maps your workforce to the concentric ring progression: individual readiness first, then outward.
10-Slide Briefing Deck
PowerPoint presentation ready for your council, board, or installation commander. Three-vector score, top priorities, cost estimates, grant opportunities, and recommended next steps. Designed to secure the governance resolution that launches the program.
Project Management Guide
Implementation guidance for the working group: meeting cadence, milestone tracking, evidence collection, and phase gate reviews. How to run the program after the assessment is delivered.
Diamond Blue Checklist
The complete checklist — 155+ items across six self-sustaining domains — localized to your community. The target architecture that defines what “ready” looks like on all three vectors.
How It Works
Step 1
Apply
Submit a request at fir.foundation. Tell us your community name and population. That is all we need to start.
Step 2
Data Load
A FIR assessor loads your community’s infrastructure data from 10+ federal open-data APIs. No access to your systems required.
Step 3
Assessment
Your infrastructure is scored across three vectors. Dependency chains are traced. Gaps are identified. Documents are generated from your actual data.
Step 4
Delivery
Your leadership receives the full 12-document suite, a briefing, and a clear path forward. Typical turnaround: 2–3 weeks.
What This Is
A data-driven starting point. A planning tool that gives your leadership real infrastructure data, a scored baseline, identified gaps, a phased roadmap, and a funding strategy — everything needed to make an informed decision about whether and how to pursue resilience. It creates momentum. It gives your working group something concrete to work from on Day 1.
What This Is Not
A completed engineering assessment. Fresh Start documents are generated from federal open-source data and have not been field-verified. All entity-specific content — infrastructure details, threat assessments, population figures — must be independently verified by local operators. This is the beginning of a process, not the end of one.
What Comes Next
The Fresh Start documents are designed to create momentum. Once your leadership has reviewed the assessment, natural next steps include:
Training
Enroll your working group in BSE 099 — free, 8 hours, online. Your team gains shared threat language and a personal readiness foundation. This is the prerequisite for everything else.
Certification
Your lead assessor progresses through CRC, CIRP, and ultimately CBRA certification — building permanent internal capability on all three vectors instead of perpetual consultant dependency.
Contracted Engagement
For communities ready to accelerate, FIR provides contracted assessment services, exercise design, grant application support, project management, and ongoing advisory through the certification journey.
Contracted Assessment Services
Beyond the free Fresh Start assessment, FIR provides contracted services for communities and organizations that need deeper engagement:
Phase 1–3 Diamond Blue Assessment
Full three-vector assessment with field verification, stakeholder interviews, and validated scoring. Includes all 12 documents plus detailed sector reports. Delivered by CIRP or CBRA-certified assessors.
City-Base Pair Assessment
For communities adjacent to military installations. Joint assessment of civilian and military infrastructure interdependencies. Coordinated resilience planning across the fence line. OLDCC grant-eligible.
Exercise Design & Facilitation
Tabletop, functional, and full-scale BSE exercises designed to your community’s specific threat posture and three-vector scores. Validates capability. Identifies gaps under realistic conditions.
Grant Application Support
FIR assessors translate your three-vector roadmap into grant-ready applications for FEMA BRIC, DOE Grid Resilience, USDA, EPA, and OLDCC programs — written in program-native language with disadvantaged community scoring advantages maximized.
Apply for a Free Assessment
No cost. No obligation. A certified FIR assessor will analyze your community’s critical infrastructure and deliver the complete 12-document planning suite. The only requirement is the decision to begin.