Year
2001
Abstract
In the Department of Safeguards, a project is under development to build a modern information system, a data warehouse, to cover data reported pursuant to INFCIRC/153- type agreements. The detailed nuclear material data reported by Member States is propagated from the central mainframe database to a relational database. From this base data, aggregated information covering batch totals, inventory changes and inventories will be kept constantly up to date. The function of the data warehouse is to provide the information and software tools to meet the complete spectrum of user needs. This ranges from delivering the basic Member State reports to inspectors directly on their desktop PC’s through to the deployment of sophisticated analysis tools for studying nuclear fuel cycles and transit matching of nuclear material. The system will assist in verification of Additional Protocol declarations by allowing the tracking over time of the reporting of intermediate or high-level transfers to waste and exemptions from safeguards of nuclear material. There is a growing awareness that an integrated information system is needed to support analysis with the implementation of strengthened safeguards. By storing aggregated data, building on an architecture that provides multi-user simultaneous real-time analysis and using software languages and methods that are information technology standards, the data warehouse will effectively integrate with other safeguards applications.