Measuring Progress Toward Implementing a Sustainable Transportation Security Program in the Russian Federation

The U.S. Department of Energy Material Protection, Control, and Accountability (MPC&A) Program has supported security upgrades to protect special nuclear materials during transport in the Russian Federation for the last decade. Implementing security upgrades and operations that are sustainable is an important goal of the program. This raises a natural question, how to measure sustainability? An approach for measuring MPC&A sustainability implementation progress was suggested in an earlier paper coauthored by one of the authors of this paper (Pillai et al., 2005). This paper expands on that previous work. Notions of sustainability that have been developed in a variety of fields are reviewed to establish a conceptual basis for sustainability measurement. Then the concept of separating sustainability program elements that enable and support good sustainable operations from the operating practices themselves is introduced. Measurements can be used for a variety of purposes, and what constitutes the most useful metric for a particular purpose may vary depending upon its use. Alternative methods for identifying metrics appropriate for different applications, such as management oversight, project tracking, decision support, planning, and operational support are suggested. Practical considerations are explored for a specific application to the national, cross-cutting Transportation Security Project.