Galson Sciences Ltd - Research Data Management (RDM) system
RDM is aimed at the cohesive organisation and management of all of the data and information that underlies regulatory compliance of a waste disposal site (e.g., site characterisation, waste characterisation, performance assessment, legislation, facility design and construction).
As part of RDM, a conceptual data model has been developed that documents the structure of, and relational links between, such compliance-related data. Parts of the RDM have been implemented in several computerised systems for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) project in the United States. These systems have the capacity to be integrated into user front-ends that access a single underlying RDM-structured relational database of information. RDM allows the user to access information from any angle and in any structure.
Galson Sciences has developed a user-friendly system that implements those aspects of the RDM that concern the development and documentation of performance assessment (PA) models and parameters (PASS V2.0). (PASS has since been developed into a web-based system, PA_TARDIS.) PASS allows the user to view and follow links between key types of PA information, including FEPs, scenarios, conceptual models, mathematical models, numerical models, computer codes, code parameters and parameter values, review comments, regulatory criteria, project tasks, and monitoring, experimentation and characterisation tasks. PASS also has the capability to track changes between PAs and changes in the official project position.
The primary uses and benefits of RDM and PASS V2.0 to management, the PA team, and regulators are:
Management
- Planning of Activities:
- Helps managers to understand how the safety case treats various issues and to view the documentation supporting the treatment.
- Helps managers to monitor and plan activities, and to understand how results will support the safety case components and their justification.
- Helps managers to appreciate and control the potential consequences/ benefits of updates to parts of the safety case in terms of effects on other areas.
- Communication and Regulatory Interaction:
- Helps to compile clear regulatory and summary documentation rapidly and efficiently.
- Acts as a communication tool during interaction with reviewers, regulators, and the public to build additional confidence in the safety case.
- Acts as a tool to track the treatment of reviewer comments over time.
- Quality Assurance (QA):
- Acts as a quality control on the text describing the safety case development process.
- Helps to enforce QA procedures and prevent non-compliances.
Safety Case Development Team
- Helps to plan and trace how the safety case has included all significant FEPs and their interactions.
- Helps to ensure that all decisions and entities are properly justified, i.e., identify and fill gaps early in the safety case development process.
- Helps to trace the use of site characterisation, modelling, professional judgement, and literature data in the safety case.
- Helps to follow relationships to other site activities and the requirements of other end-users.
- Helps to visualise the cascading effects of changes to one part of the safety case.
Reviewers and Regulators
- Helps to audit and build confidence in the comprehensiveness of the safety case.
- Helps to trace the decisions and their justification in the safety case, identifying the relevant information and preventing misunderstanding.