# Free worksheet: where changing water and energy conditions affect your work

## Free worksheet: where changing water and energy conditions affect your work

You do not need a climate model—or a consultant—to notice that a service depends on water, electricity and people beyond its walls. This is a short, free exercise to find **one decision whose old assumptions deserve another look**.

It is meant for a local business, property steward, community organization, project coordinator or small service provider. It does not assess legal floodplain status, certify a site as safe or replace a qualified hydrologist, electrician, tribal consultation or local permitting process. No login or purchase is required to use it.

### 1. Choose one job and its receiver (3 minutes)

Write down a service or activity that must keep working, especially during an interruption.

| Prompt | Your answer |
| --- | --- |
| The job that must continue |  |
| The person or community relying on it |  |
| The physical location and relevant season |  |
| How long an interruption can be tolerated |  |

Be precise. “Customers can enter the shop during a spring rain event” identifies a real recipient and operating condition. “Become climate resilient” does not yet define a job.

### 2. Find the baseline you have been assuming (4 minutes)

Name the source of an old expectation. Examples: last decade's rainfall patterns, a historical drainage map, how often a power outage happens, a supplier's promise of continuous service, or a typical summer water bill.

Write **when** it was measured or agreed, **where** it applied and **who** supplied it. State what decision still rests on it. If you do not know, write “not yet established”; an absent document is not proof that conditions have stayed the same.

This matters because the [IPCC documents significant changes to the water cycle](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-8/) and water-resource scientists have long cautioned against assuming unchanging historical flood and flow statistics ([Milly et al., 2008](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1151915)). Your particular parcel and utility still require particular evidence.

### 3. Draw the dependencies, including people downstream (4 minutes)

On paper, draw a box for your site. Draw arrows for water entering or leaving it: hillslope, pavement, roof, wetland, drain, ditch, stream, groundwater where known. Add energy supply, storage or backup and any other service on which this job depends. Label **unknown** links rather than imagining them.

Who might be affected if your site changes drainage or stops operating? Who owns, manages or has legally protected rights in the relevant land or water? A watershed line reveals physical relationships; it does not replace property boundaries, Indigenous or treaty rights, jurisdiction or consent.

Useful outside context: the [USGS hydrologic units](https://www.usgs.gov/tools/hydrologic-units-united-states) help identify nested drainage areas, but even official units do not always match every natural flow connection.

### 4. Give energy and financial costs different lines (3 minutes)

Record the actual electricity use or fuel consumption for the selected job and its units, the time of use and the consequence of interruption. Then separately record what you actually pay for that energy. If metering is absent, label a figure **estimate**, not measurement.

For example, a 1 kW device running for 3 hours consumes **3 kWh**, subject to its actual power draw. A price quoted in dollars or USDC is not a measure of physical energy delivered. An “energy-based currency” would require a defined issuer, real redemption rights and verifiable settlement; none is created by filling out this worksheet.

You may also ask whether apparent savings hold over a series of outages. A favorable average monthly bill can coexist with one sequence of failures that makes the job impossible to continue.

### 5. Choose one lawful, reversible next action (4 minutes)

Pick **one** low-cost action within your authority that could materially improve the decision:

- Find the correct drainage, flood or utility source for the site and check its observation date.
- Arrange an authorized inspection or ask a qualified local service about a specific discrepancy.
- Establish whom to contact upstream and downstream before modifying water flow.
- Verify the energy meter and record one genuine interruption or peak-demand period.
- Set a new review trigger: a changed official map, a major storm, a permit change, a supply contract renewal or a relevant new measurement.

Write the evidence you expect to receive, who will receive it and how you will know the gesture helped. A search result, internal checklist or purchase order is not by itself evidence that the risk changed.

### One worked example (illustrative)

A neighborhood workshop depends on a loading entrance that has occasionally flooded. Its manager finds a ten-year-old site drainage drawing and learns that adjacent land cover has changed. The immediate lawful next step is not to dig a diversion toward a neighbor. It is to obtain the current public drainage information, record the present inlet condition and request an authorized assessment. The next independent receipt could be the dated assessment and the property steward's decision, **not** a claim that flooding has already been prevented.

### Use the result

You now have a small, specific account of a job, an assumption that may have changed, its physical and human dependencies and one next action. Keep it as a dated note. Revisit it when the evidence or the actual situation changes.

The 561 Group's wider research asks why [stationarity and time-averaged outcomes](https://science.561.group/) matter for physical systems and economics. Its [Engineering](https://engineering.561.group/) work concerns interoperable data and decision tools; [Operations](https://operations.561.group/) concerns authorization, intervention and independently observed effects. [Causeway Services](https://services.561.group/) turns warranted knowledge into public tools and actual offers where a provider has established one.

To ask about a **specific** paid engagement, use the existing [561 Group contact route](https://561.group/contact/). This worksheet is free; it does not assert that a climate assessment product, service capacity or paid checkout exists.