Background
Preparedness is key to a community's ability to respond to and recover from an adverse event, but assessing preparedness is a larger and more complex task than emergency management planning alone. With the development of proposed consolidated spent nuclear fuel (SNF) storage facilities, shipments of SNF across the United States (U.S.) are anticipated to increase. Thus, efficiently assessing community preparedness, identifying vulnerable communities, and developing effective communication strategies will become increasingly important. No tools were previously available to quantifiably evaluate the preparedness of communities from a societal and environmental perspective with respect to SNF transportation.
Our team previously developed a limited pilot framework tool in an externally funded project including two major components: (i) selection of indicators central to characterizing overall community preparedness based on a review of community preparedness literature and assessment tools, and (ii) development of a scaling and weighting system to normalize data and convey the importance of each indicator in an overall framework score. The tool was constructed in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with 31 indicators that could be manually populated with data values and corresponding scaled values and weights. The purpose of this Internal Research and Development (IR&D) project was to further the concept developed in the previous project.
Approach
The two main phases of this project were extending the framework tool’s application and enhancing the framework tool. For the first phase, the 31 indicators were reexamined as to whether the indicator scales and weights are appropriate for application across the U.S. by considering how geographical areas other than the western U.S. are impacted by the societal and environmental factors captured by the indicators. In addition, some indicators and their data sources were updated to incorporate more reliable data sources and consistent data entries. The second phase included a feasibility analysis of using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros to automatically retrieve and process data from centralized and decentralized data sources to reduce the likelihood of user error, data entry mistakes, and the time and labor required to run the framework tool.
Accomplishments
About half of the total number of indicators were able to be automated (16 indicators) using VBA macros, some indicators were updated to assist a user in acquiring data manually (12 indicators), and a small number of indicators were unable to be automated or updated (3 indicators). To make the framework tool more user-friendly and reduce opportunities for user error, general user instructions were added to the framework tool guiding users how to use the automated downloads or select their own data values. Refinement of the framework tool reduced the labor burden and the likelihood of user error by automating data retrieval, processing, and input for State and local decisionmakers who are considering effective resource allocation and developing communication approaches prior to a potential SNF transportation campaign. Two new contracts have been awarded, one by the original external client, to benchmark and ground-truth the framework.