Airport Sustainability Practices (2016)

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29 chapter three REPORTING SUSTAINABILITY PRACTICES THROUGH THE SUSTAINABLE AVIATION GUIDANCE ALLIANCE (SAGA) WEBSITE DATA ENTRY PROCESS One-on-one webinars with the 10 project participants were administered to capture the data assem- bled for each of the sustainability practices. Prior to these sessions, participants assembled data on their practices in accordance with the SAGA data categories. Participants were then directed through a simplified six-step process: 1. Go to www.airportsustainablity.org on your web browser; 2. Log in as yourself or as a guest; 3. Go to the “Search” function and search for your practice (for existing practices) or click the “Add a Practice” button (for new practices); 4. Open your data collection file; 5. Enter data through drop-down menu responses; and 6. Provide feedback on data entry process. The data entry procedure is detailed in Appendix A. FINDINGS ON USABILITY OF THE SAGA WEBSITE At the conclusion of each data entry session, participants were asked to provide feedback regarding their experience using SAGA, as summarized in Appendix B. Participants were asked how much time had been required to complete their practice entry, including data assembly. The responses ranged from 15 minutes to three hours, with the majority of users stating that they completed the work in 30 to 60 minutes. Although feedback was requested in accordance with the standard questionnaire used on the SAGA website, most participants had limited experience using the website and were therefore unable to respond to survey questions regarding the various features of the website. This indicates that there may still be a large untapped audience for the SAGA website. Therefore, each feedback session was tailored to the level of participant experience using SAGA, and participants generally provided feedback concerning website navigation/technical issues and interpretation of SAGA data categories. Website Navigation In general, participants found the website easy to navigate. Most had not used SAGA prior to this project and were unfamiliar with its features; however, all but two were able to successfully navigate the data entry process on the first attempt. As outlined in Appendix A, successful completion of data entry in a sustainability practice should be indicated through a pop-up message that states, “Thank you for your input! Your edits will be reviewed by a SAGA administrator soon and will be posted upon their approval. You will be contacted with any follow-up questions.” Respondents noted that the color coding of SAGA’s various features (search, plan, share, etc.) works well and aids navigation.

30 Technical Issues Respondents noted the following issues during the data entry process: • Responsiveness: The website is slow to respond during navigation. • Use of filters: The “search” function in SAGA allows users to filter sustainability practices by airport characteristics, practice categories, and practice details. One user commented that the use of filters does not appear to sort results. This is primarily because one applies multiple filters to noticeably narrow the results from the total number of practices in SAGA. In any case, the user noted that the results are not organized in a clear manner upon filtering. • Connectivity problems: In two cases, participants were unable to navigate past the home page, and encountered a connectivity problem upon attempting to use the “search” feature of the web- site. Both users attributed this connectivity to outdated Internet connections at the workplace as well as stringent firewalls. In both cases, the data for these participants was entered while they verbally responded while observing via webinar. While it appeared that these users had simply lost connectivity during the data entry session, the users confirmed that there was a problem with the site by testing their connections on other websites. This may be resolved through future improvements to SAGA that have been identi- fied in other website testing instances. • Error messages: Several of the users whose sustainability practices were already entered in SAGA, but who had no corresponding data, encountered errors upon completing the entry of their case examples blaming an internal server error. However, after refreshing the webpage, their case examples appeared correctly. In addition, these users did not receive a pop-up message after submitting their practice data stating that an administrator would review their entries. It appeared as if their data were lost; whereas there was simply a lag time between the data entry process and the data being published on the site. These problems have been corrected. • Length of title field: The length of the title field on the case example data entry page is not long enough. Interpretation of SAGA Data Categories The second category of feedback received relates to the users’ interpretation of the data requested in SAGA. The practice data collection page in SAGA is essentially a series of data types with cor- responding multiple-choice, drop-down responses. Several users indicated that it would be helpful if there were more “set-up” to explain what the user is being asked to respond to, and perhaps actual questions would serve this purpose. The most common issue noted by participants was in response to the data category called “Report- ability of Metrics:” Nearly every participant commented in one way or another that it was unclear what was being queried. In each data entry session, the participant was allowed to talk through the potential responses, and in most cases it was clear that the user was struggling to choose a response. In the end, because many of the practices captured by this synthesis are unique and/or do not result in quantitative results (e.g., social responsibility practices), many participants chose “qualitative metric.” These user experiences may bring into question the overall utility of this data category. The next most common issue encountered by participants relates to the “Airport Characteristics” data. Many users were unsure whether they were being asked to describe their airport’s characteris- tics, or whether the intent was to help other users determine whether the practice might apply to their own airports. For instance, while a glycol recovery program may be equally relevant to scheduled passenger service, cargo, general aviation, and military airports, the subject of the case example for this practice selected only “schedule passenger service” and “cargo,” presumably because they do not operate general aviation or military facilities. A simple descriptor that states “Could your practice be applied to the following airport types?” could alleviate this confusion and yield more consistent responses across the practices catalogued in SAGA.

31 Other miscellaneous comments were noted, as follows: • The case examples and map function offer excellent networking opportunities. • Adding precipitation levels to the climate characteristics field would be useful, particularly as SAGA expands its inventory of climate resilience practices. • The program costs captured for practices can be misleading, and do not account for scalability. A full-scale program at a large airport may cost substantially more than a pilot program of the same nature at a small airport; this may dissuade practitioners from pursuing new practices. • Very little about the website branding suggests it is aviation/airport-related; it appears more generically geared toward sustainability.