Hazardous Materials Transportation: a Literature Review and an Annotated Bibliography

The hazardous materials transportation poses risks to life, health, property, and the environment due to the possibility of an unintentional release. We present a bibliographic survey on this argument paying particular attention to the road transportation. We attempt to encompass both theoretical and application oriented works. Research on this topic is spread over the broad spectrum of computer science and the literature has an operations research and quantitative risk assessment focus. The models present in the literature vary from simple risk equations to set of differential equations. In discussing the literature, we present and compare the underlying assumptions, the model specifications and the derived results. We use the previous perspectives to critically cluster the papers in the literature into a classification scheme

OPTIMIZATION OF RAILWAY TRANSPORTATION HAZMATS AND REGULAR COMMODITIES

Transportation of dangerous goods has been receiving more attention in the realm of academic and scientific research during the last few decades as countries have been increasingly becoming industrialized throughout the world, thereby making Hazmats an integral part of our life style. However, the number of scholarly articles in this field is not as many as those of other areas in SCM. Considering the low-probability-and-high-consequence (LPHC) essence of transportation of Hazmats, on the one hand, and immense volume of shipments accounting for more than hundred tons in North America and Europe, on the other, we can safely state that the number of scholarly articles and dissertations have not been proportional to the significance of the subject of interest. On this ground, we conducted our research to contribute towards further developing the domain of Hazmats transportation, and sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), in general terms. Transportation of Hazmats, from logistical standpoint, may include all modes of transport via air, marine, road and rail, as well as intermodal transportation systems. Although road shipment is predominant in most of the literature, railway transportation of Hazmats has proven to be a potentially significant means of transporting dangerous goods with respect to both economies of scale and risk of transportation; these factors, have not just given rise to more thoroughly investigation of intermodal transportation of Hazmats using road and rail networks, but has encouraged the competition between rail and road companies which may indeed have some inherent advantages compared to the other medium due to their infrastructural and technological backgrounds. Truck shipment has ostensibly proven to be providing more flexibility; trains, per contra, provide more reliability in terms of transport risk for conveying Hazmats in bulks. In this thesis, in consonance with the aforementioned motivation, we provide an introduction into the hazardous commodities shipment through rail network in the first chapter of the thesis. Providing relevant statistics on the volume of Hazmat goods, number of accidents, rate of incidents, and rate of fatalities and injuries due to the incidents involving Hazmats, will shed light onto the significance of the topic under study. As well, we review the most pertinent articles while putting more emphasis on the state-of-the-art papers, in chapter two. Following the discussion in chapter 3 and looking at the problem from carrier company’s perspective, a mixed integer quadratically constraint problem (MIQCP) is developed which seeks for the minimization of transportation cost under a set of constraints including those associating with Hazmats. Due to the complexity of the problem, the risk function has been piecewise linearized using a set of auxiliary variables, thereby resulting in an MIP problem. Further, considering the interests of both carrier companies and regulatory agencies, which are minimization of cost and risk, respectively, a multiobjective MINLP model is developed, which has been reduced to an MILP through piecewise linearization of the risk term in the objective function. For both single-objective and multiobjective formulations, model variants with bifurcated and nonbifurcated flows have been presented. Then, in chapter 4, we carry out experiments considering two main cases where the first case presents smaller instances of the problem and the second case focuses on a larger instance of the problem. Eventually, in chapter five, we conclude the dissertation with a summary of the overall discussion as well as presenting some comments on avenues of future work

Disaster management and its economic implications

Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, aktuelle Forschungsschwerpunkte im Bereich des Katastrophenmanagements in der Operational Research Literatur aufzuzeigen. Katastrophenmanagement umfasst in diesem Zusammenhang einerseits Naturkatastrophen wie geophysikalische und hydro-meteorologische Katastrophen, technologische Katastrophen wie industrielle Unfälle, Transportunfälle und sonstige Unfälle, und andererseits die verschiedenen Formen des Terrorismus, allgemeinen Terrorismus sowie Bioterrorismus. Da die Anzahl und das Ausmaß von Katastrophen immer weiter zunehmen ist auch eine immer größere Notwendigkeit für die Entwicklung, den Einsatz und die wirtschaftliche Beurteilung der jeweiligen Strategien gegeben. Der erste Teil dieser Arbeit gibt einen Überblick über die Literatur im Bereich des Katastrophenmanagements und umfasst Simulation, Katastrophenmanagement in Krankenhäusern und die Rolle von Versicherungen im Katastrophenmanagementprozess. Im zweiten Teil wird eine Taxonomie entwickelt, deren Kategorien auf den Modellen und Ergebnissen der Literatur beruhen. Einerseits werden allgemeine Modelleigenschaften wie die Ebene im Katastrophenmanagementprozess, der Modelltyp und die Anwendungsgebiete der Modelle untersucht. Andererseits stellen die Art der Intervention und die Anwendbarkeit für die unterschiedlichen Katastrophenklassen weitere Kategorien der Taxonomie dar. Es wurden 90 Artikel, die beispielhaft für die Forschungsrichtungen im Bereich des Katastrophenmanagements der letzten 25 Jahre stehen, ausgewählt, und entsprechend den jeweiligen Kategorien der Taxonomie zugeordnet. Das Hauptaugenmerk der Taxonomie liegt auf der wirtschaftlichen Analyse, die wirksamkeitsbezogene, ressourcenbezogene und kostenbezogene Parameter umfasst. Es wird gezeigt ob und welche wirtschaftliche Analyse wie beispielsweise die Kosten-Nutzwert- Analyse, die Kosten-Wirksamkeits-Analyse und die Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse angewendet wird um die in den Artikeln beschriebenen Interventionen zu evaluieren. Es wird gezeigt, dass erhebliche Verbesserungen für die verschiedenen Katastrophentypen und in den verschiedenen Situationen erzielt werden können. Eingeschränkte Datenverfügbarkeit schränkt in vielen Fällen die Einsetzbarkeit der Modelle in realen Situationen ein. Im Allgemeinen ist erkennbar, dass Kooperation und Koordination zwischen den beteiligten Einheiten ausschlaggebend für den zeitgerechten und effizienten Einsatz der knappen Ressourcen sind. Oftmals erzielt der gemeinsame Einsatz mehrerer Maßnahme ein deutlich besseres Ergebnis als der Einsatz von lediglich einem einzigen Instrument. Die Taxonomie unterstreicht dass trotz der großen Fülle an Literatur im Bereich des Katastrophenmanagements nur wenige Autoren auf die Kosten-Nutzwert-Analyse, die Kosten-Wirksamkeits-Analyse und die Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse als Hilfsmittel zur wirtschaftlichen Analyse zurückgreifen. In Zukunft, um Interventionen erfolgreich evaluieren zu können oder die beste aus mehreren Interventionen bestimmen zu können wird es immer wichtiger werden, diese Art von wirtschaftlichen Analysen anzuwenden.This thesis intends to demonstrate current research directions in the field of disaster management in the Operational Research literature. Disaster management in this context comprises the management of natural, such as geophysical and hydro-meteorological, and technological disasters, such as industrial accidents, transportation accidents, and miscellaneous accidents, as well as the management of the different terrorism forms, general terrorism and bioterrorism. As the occurrence of disasters is getting more and more frequent and the accumulated loss of these events is getting higher and higher, there is a strong need for the development, implication and economic evaluation of strategies to counter these disasters. In the first part of the thesis, a general overview of the literature is given, including a focus on simulation, disaster management in hospitals, and the role of insurances in the disaster management process. The second part encompasses the taxonomy which focuses on models and outcomes presented in the literature. As a result of the review of the literature, appropriate categories for the disaster management taxonomy are derived. On the one hand, an overview of general model features, i.e., the level of disaster management, model type and methods of application is given. On the other hand, the type of intervention used and the practicability for different disaster types are discussed. 90 papers, illustrative main examples of the research directions of the last 25 years, were selected for deeper investigation and classified according to the main criteria analyzed in the articles. The main focus of the taxonomy lies on the economic analysis, which encompasses effectiveness-related, resource-related, and cost-related parameters and shows the type of economic analysis used in the literature. We analyze whether economic analysis, i.e., costutility, cost-effectiveness, and cost-benefit are used to investigate different interventions and what type of analysis has been chosen by the authors. Policy implications and results show that considerable improvements can be achieved for different disastrous events and in different situations. Limited data availability constrains the outcomes of the models and their applicability to real-world situations. In general, cooperation and coordination of the entities involved are crucial to guarantee timely and efficient assignment of scarce resources. Furthermore, different authors confirm that a combination of various measures often achieves a better outcome than if tools are used autonomously. The taxonomy has underlined that although there exists a vast disaster management literature dealing with various problems related to mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery from disasters, there are only a few authors evaluating the actions taken through economic analyses such cost-utility, cost-effectiveness, or cost-benefit analysis. In the future, to be able to evaluate interventions, or to figure out the most effective intervention among several interventions, it is crucial to stronger rely on the abovementioned economic analyses