START is a web-GIS transportation decision-support tool developed by DOE’s Office of Integrated Waste Management (IWM) to enable visualization and analyses of geospatial data relevant to planning and operating a large-scale spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste transportation system. IWM is using START in a variety of applications, including: 1) assessing modal and routing options and associated risks, 2) evaluating emergency response training needs along routes, 3) providing enhanced stakeholder communication through maps and other visualizations, 4) performing environmental analyses including incident-free and incident-caused SNF transport dose estimates, and 5) supporting the integration of transportation logistics within analyses of the overall waste management system. START’s ease-of-use and flexibility has made it an ideal environment for users to perform “what-if” scenarios and to assess performance tradeoffs associated with various transportation alternatives. Moreover, users can download maps and analysis results as stand-alone graphical, geospatial, or tabular products or for inclusion in other reports or studies. This short course will demonstrate START’s capabilities within the context of presenting the tool’s underlying data and analysis functions, present sample START use-cases, and share information on further enhancements that are under development.

Attendees are encouraged to officially register as a START user prior to the course at https://start.energy.gov.

Those who choose to do so should bring a laptop to the course so that they can use the tool interactively during the session.