Coordinating critical transportation infrastructure vulnerability

Harness the scientific knowledge and tools to counter terrorism
Emergency Preparedness and Response
Improve tactical counterterrorist capabilities
Enable seamless communication among all responders
Prepare health care providers for catastrophic terrorism
Prepare for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear decontamination
These 14 WMATA-relevant DHS initiatives will be used in Section 6.2.2 to illustrate a methodology
for prioritizing WMATA’s projects and initiatives in support of DHS’s efforts.
Goals of Prioritization
The National Strategy for Homeland Security states that “decisions on homeland security activities and
spending must achieve two overarching goals: to devote the right amount of scarce resources to homeland security and to
spend these resources on the right activities.” This process of prioritization, and the methodology
prescribed in this chapter, focuses on the second goal. The National Strategy describes this goal by
explaining that “because some activities might achieve substantial benefits at low cost, while others result in minimal
gain at a high price, resources should be shifted to their most ‘productive’ use.” While Section 6.1 described the
use of measures like Return On Investment (ROI), Cost-Benefit Ratios (CBRs), and Net Present
Value (NPV), there is another way to analyze projects and initiatives against an organization’s goals
by using a process called a Goals Achievement Methodology.
6.2.1 Goals Achievement Methodology
The Goals Achievement Methodology enables competing projects to be compared against each
other by using an established set of criteria. Commonly used criteria consist of features like lives
saved, reduction in travel time, mean time between failure, mean time to repair, and even the
quantitative measures described in Section 6.1 (e.g., ROI, CBRs, and NPV). A more useful
application of this methodology, however, is to compare projects against the organization’s goals,
and to evaluate each project’s ability to impact those goals. The next few sections describe this
approach and provide some sample data to illustrate how this approach is used.
Goals Achievement Methodology Template
This section describes the goals achievement template that has been prepared for WMATA using
the National Strategy for Homeland Security’s “critical mission areas” and “major initiatives” as
evaluation criteria. Table 6.1 illustrates the “critical mission areas” and “major initiatives” along the
left and placeholders for WMATA’s projects and initiatives across the top.
PUBP 710/722 Page 33 of 60
WMATA Case Study June 5, 2003