Task Forces
FIR organizes its volunteer workforce into task forces — each focused on a specific domain of the resilience mission. Task forces develop content, conduct assessments, advance research, and build the tools communities need.
How Task Forces Work
Each task force operates remotely with a designated lead, a defined mission, and deliverables that feed the broader FIR framework. Volunteers are matched to task forces based on professional expertise. Most task force work requires 2–5 hours per week on a flexible schedule.
Task Force Meeting Schedule
Operational Task Forces
Pacing Threats
Strategic intelligence — synthesizing adversarial threat activity, TTPs, and course of action triggers that could impact U.S. critical infrastructure and governance. Strategic forecasting, policy advocacy, and open-source intelligence analysis across the Four-Party Ecosystem.
Household & Community Readiness
Promoting awareness and facilitating readiness at the individual, household, and community organization level. Affordable solution sets, personal readiness materials, Get Home Bag guidance, and the building blocks that support post-BSE community recovery and continuity.
Microgrids
Distributed energy resilience — islanded power generation, solar-plus-storage, community-scale microgrids, and the technical standards for energy independence that defines Diamond Blue on the EMP/GMD and physical vectors.
Public Health & Medical Readiness
Healthcare continuity under grid-down conditions. Pharmaceutical supply chain contingency. Opioid crisis management. Community medical station planning. Shadow Medical inventory methodology. Medicinal plant cultivation under the Resilient Agrihood Doctrine.
Infrastructure Interdependencies
Mapping the dependency chains that drive cascading failure. Which substation powers the water plant? Which pipeline feeds the hospital generator? The six-tier dependency model and the mutual dependency deadlock that makes pre-event planning the only viable response.
OT & IT Cybersecurity
Cyber vector assessment standards. Volt Typhoon, CyberAv3ngers, Salt Typhoon, and emerging OT threats. Guidance for utilities and communities with no dedicated cybersecurity staff. Default credential elimination, IT/OT segmentation, and CISA advisory implementation.
Global Supply Chain
Supply chain resilience is built across an ecosystem, not by any one participant alone. The owner of the supply chain must strengthen every critical link, because a single failure can disrupt or halt the supply chain. By combining best practices, insight into emerging threats, and innovative technologies, we examine solutions for stronger, more resilient supply chain ecosystems.
Resilient Communications
Post-BSE communications architecture — the five-layer model from tactical (FRS/GMRS) through strategic (HF ham). Shadow Comms inventory. Ham radio network development. 50+ licensed operator targets. Non-electronic backup validation.
Policy, Education & Public Relations
Stakeholder engagement, media relations, conference presentations, and policy advocacy. FERC comment submissions. Executive Order development. Public messaging that translates complex threat analysis into accessible briefings for elected officials and community leaders.
COTS Resilience Solutions
Evaluating commercial off-the-shelf products and services for BSE readiness — water filtration, solar power systems, communications equipment, medical supplies, food storage, and hardening materials. Product-neutral assessments that help communities make informed procurement decisions.
Community Assessment
Conducts Fresh Start assessments for requesting communities. Federal data loading, three-vector baseline scoring, and 12-document planning suite generation. The operational arm that delivers FIR’s core service to communities nationwide.
Training & Curriculum Development
Builds course content from BSE 099 through CBRA certification. Develops quizzes, exercises, scenarios, and assessment rubrics. Manages the LMS platform. Requires instructional design experience or deep subject matter expertise.
Grant Strategy & Federal Programs
Maps Diamond Blue checklist items to federal grant programs. Develops application templates in program-native language. Tracks FEMA BRIC, DOE Grid Resilience, USDA, EPA, and OLDCC funding cycles and scoring criteria.
Technology & Tools
Develops and maintains the FIR Resilience Framework application, assessment document generators, and website. HTML, JavaScript, Leaflet.js, WordPress, LMS integration.
Military & Base-Community Integration
City-base pair assessments for communities adjacent to military installations. Civilian infrastructure resilience as a deployment readiness factor. OLDCC coordination, installation mutual aid frameworks, and the 8-domain military integration model. Veterans and active-duty civil support personnel especially needed.
Organizational Resilience Planning
Continuity-of-operations planning for entities of all types — before the incident, not during it. Maps the resilience-planning marketplace, inventories existing frameworks, methodologies, and COTS tools, and identifies the gaps FIR can fill. Develops the Continuity of Operations template that turns a FIR Framework Assessment into an actionable plan. Business continuity and emergency management practitioners especially will benefit.
Join a Task Force
When you volunteer with FIR, you participate as a general member, or become involved in task forces based on your skills and interests. No experience with BSE resilience is required — interest and subject matter expertise in any of these domains translates directly.