DOE Safety Metrics Indicator Program (SMIP) Third Quarter FY 2001 Quarterly Report

The Safety Metrics Indicator Program (SMIP) retrieved 69 packaging- or transportation-related occurrences from the Occurrence Reporting and Processing System (ORPS) during the period from April 1 through June 30, 2001. Only those incidents that occur in preparation for transport, during transport, and during unloading of hazardous material are considered as packaging- or transportation-related occurrences. Other incidents with packaging and transportation (P and T) significance but not involving hazardous material (such as vehicle accidents or empty packagings) are not rated to the SMIP criteria, but are archived in the SMIP Subsidiary Database of occurrences, a sub-database of the main SMIP P and T Occurrence Database. Fifty-one of the originally-selected 69 occurrences were appropriate for classification to the SMIP criteria, 26 of which have offsite applicability. Eight of the original 69 reports are archived in a subsidiary database because they either do not involve the transport of hazardous material or they do not involve transport by vehicle, plane, boat, or rail. The others were either deleted because more thorough review revealed that they were not strictly related to P and T or they were canceled by the reporting site and removed from the ORPS. The number and severity of the selected occurrence reports (ORs) are similar with historical reporting. No adverse trends were pronounced. However, when the number of ORs obtained during the third quarter are combined with those obtained during the first and second quarters, it appears that there may be a slight increase over the 150 P and T-related ORs that are typically retrieved from the ORPS annually. On the other hand, the severity of the ORs continues to be non-alarming. None of the 51 ORs that were rated had event consequence measures (WEC) greater than 2, 31 of which were categorized as having a WEC of 1. This means that all of the third quarter fiscal year (FY) 2001 ORs had only slight consequences at worst (i.e., resulting in minimal safety consequences with little potential for ultimately leading to suspected endangerment of people or environmental contamination). Because the event consequence measure is low, the overall hazard significance ratings (HSRs) are relatively low, indicating that the actual risks posed by the occurrences are not highly threatening. In fact, even the 1 reported emergency OR and the 3 unusual ORs had HSRs of 20 or less. The ORs are summarized in the appendix and listed along with their HSR and stakeholder interest [currently termed the stakeholder and publicity rating (SPR)]. This enables one to get a feel of how the nature of an occurrence and its P and T significance translates into a severity rating. The information provided in this third quarter report has not been normalized as in the Annual Report of Occurrences because the necessary information is not yet available. Once the majority of the functions of the Enterprise Transportation Analysis System (ETAS) are integrated into the Automated Transportation Management System (ATMS) and the ATMS is subsequently updated and improved, information should be readily available from ATMS, which will provide a basis for speedily normalizing occurrence data. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Transportation Program Albuquerque (NTPA) is currently working toward this goal.