National Academies Press: OpenBook

A Guidebook for Sustainability Performance Measurement for Transportation Agencies (2011)

Chapter: Chapter 1 - Welcome to the Sustainability Performance Measures User s Guide

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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 1 - Welcome to the Sustainability Performance Measures User s Guide." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. A Guidebook for Sustainability Performance Measurement for Transportation Agencies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14598.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 1 - Welcome to the Sustainability Performance Measures User s Guide." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. A Guidebook for Sustainability Performance Measurement for Transportation Agencies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14598.
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Welcome to the Sustainability Performance Measures User’s Guide 1 Chapter 1 Welcome to the Sustainability Performance Measures User’s Guide ABOUT THIS GUIDE Many transportation agencies are recognizing the importance of sustainability—in terms of concern for the environment, community health and vitality, and economic development, now and into the future. However, these agencies often struggle to apply sustainability in their core activities. This guidebook provides a flexible framework through which transportation agencies can apply the concepts of sustainability through performance measurement. NCHRP Project 8-74, “Sustainability Performance Measures for State DOTs and Other Transportation Agencies,” includes this guidebook, the enclosed CD-ROM, and a research report. The research report forms the basis for the research approach and is available at the NCHRP Project 8-74 website. The research report offers • Background on sustainability definitions and issues, • Theory on how to apply sustainability, • Performance measurement for sustainability, and • Detailed references and resource material. The guidebook will help you, your partners who are familiar with how sustainability applies to your work and are ready to design performance measures, and other transportation professionals: • Establish and use sustainability performance measures to evaluate your programs and Many transportation agencies are recognizing the importance of sustainability—in terms of concern for the environment, community health and vitality, and economic development, now and into the future.

2 A Guidebook for Sustainability Performance Measurement for Transportation Agencies • Gauge the effectiveness of these strategies in implementing sustainability. HOW IS IT ORGANIZED? Every transportation agency brings different resources, goals, and challenges to incorporating sustainability. This guidebook allows you to quickly find the information and resources you need to implement and evaluate sustainability. Highlights from case studies are located throughout the chapters to provide real-world examples of how agencies are incorporating sustainability performance measures. The appendices contain full case studies as well as other supplemental materials that you may find useful, including a glossary of terms and examples of performance measure use. The CD-ROM accompanying this guidebook contains an electronic compendium of performance measures as well as a PowerPoint presentation and materials that you may want to use to introduce sustainability concepts to your agency. These electronic materials are also available on the NCHRP Project 8-74 website. Following is a description of the remaining chapters of the guidebook: • Chapter 2: What Does Sustainability Mean to Transportation Agencies? – This chapter provides an overview of the basics of sustainability, explains how these basics relate to the work of transportation agencies, and orients any user to the principles of sustainability. • Chapter 3: Getting Organized—Setting Yourself Up for Success – This chapter discusses how to take a practical, phased approach to implementing performance measurement and offers questions to assess how you can take advantage of the data and processes you may already have in place. • Chapter 4: Understanding the Sustainability Performance Measurement Framework – This chapter explains the general, applicable framework that you can use to design your agency’s performance measurement system. • Chapter 5: Using the Sustainability Performance Measurement Framework – This chapter provides a step-by-step explanation of how to use each of the components of the framework to fit your agency’s needs. You can turn to the step that matches where your agency is in the process. • Chapter 6: Resources for Performance Measure Development and Application – This chapter presents an overview of the compendium of objectives and performance measures. • Chapter 7: Sustainability Measures Checklist – This chapter provides a checklist to make sure your goals, objectives, and measures are consistent with the principles of sustainability and that the approach you have designed will give you the information you need. • Chapter 8: Examples of Practice in Sustainability Measurement – This chapter gives an overview of the variety of work other agencies have under way and gives links to other examples. • Chapter 9: Summary and Additional Resources – This chapter summarizes what has been presented in the guidebook, lists other resources, and gives an overview of material incorporated as appendices.

Next: Chapter 2 - What Does Sustainability Mean to Transportation Agencies? »
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TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 708: A Guidebook for Sustainability Performance Measurement for Transportation Agencies describes the underlying principles of sustainability as it relates to transportation, possible goals that can be used to address those principles, and performance measures that can be used to address those goals.

Aspects of sustainability-related performance measures, including data sources and examples of use, are discussed. A reference compendium of performance measures has also been provided.

In addition to the guidebook, the contractor’s project Final Report contains the results of the literature review, surveys of the state of the practice, case study interviews, detail on research methodology and findings, and a discussion of future research needs is available on the NCHRP Project 08-74 website.

A CD-ROM, included in the print version of the guidebook, contains an Excel-spreadsheet-based version of the performance measures compendium located in Appendix B of the guidebook. The spreadsheet allows the existing measures to be modified, and macros enable the user to generate and export a custom list of measures. Instructions for using the spreadsheet are found in Appendix C.

The CD-ROM is also available for download from TRB’s website as an ISO image. Links to the ISO image and instructions for burning a CD-ROM from an ISO image are provided below.

Help on Burning an .ISO CD-ROM Image

Download the .ISO CD-ROM Image(Warning: This is a large file and may take some time to download using a high-speed connection.)

An article on NCHRP Report 708 was published in the January-February 2013 issue of the TR News.

CD-ROM Disclaimer - This software is offered as is, without warranty or promise of support of any kind either expressed or implied. Under no circumstance will the National Academy of Sciences or the Transportation Research Board (collectively “TRB’) be liable for any loss or damage caused by the installation or operation of this product. TRB makes no representation or warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, in fact or in law, including without limitation, the warranty of merchantability or the warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, and shall not in any case be liable for any consequential or special damages.

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