A Bi-Objective Approach to Evaluate Highway Routing and Regulatory Strategies for Hazardous Materials Transportation

Hazardous materials (hazmat) transportation is of concern to policymakers because of the serious safety, health, and environmental risks associated with the release of hazmat. One effective approach to minimize risks associated with hazmat transport is the prohibition of hazmat transportation on higher risk links that either pose safety hazards or increased exposure by traversing densely populated areas. Because of high risk, there are multiple stakeholders involved in hazmat transportation. While shippers and carriers are directly involved in making routing decisions, regulatory agencies influence this decision by imposing routing restrictions. In this paper, we apply a bi-objective shortest path problem to evaluate routing and regulation plans for hazmat transportation. We characterize the cost objective as the shortest path between an origin and a destination. The risk objective is to minimize the risk of exposure by restricting the link with the highest risk on the best available path from an origin to a destination. We formulate the bi-objective model and apply it to a test network. Solutions consider multiple origin-destination pairs and present a non-dominated frontier to establish routing and regulatory strategies for hazmat transportation

Design of evacuation plans for densely urbanised city centres

The high population density and tightly packed nature of some city centres make emergency planning for these urban spaces especially important, given the potential for human loss in case of disaster. Historic and recent events have made emergency service planners particularly conscious of the need for preparing evacuation plans in advance. This paper discusses a methodological approach for assisting decision-makers in designing urban evacuation plans. The approach aims at quickly and safely moving the population away from the danger zone into shelters. The plans include determining the number and location of rescue facilities, as well as the paths that people should take from their building to their assigned shelter in case of an occurrence requiring evacuation. The approach is thus of the location–allocation–routing type, through the existing streets network, and takes into account the trade-offs among different aspects of evacuation actions that inevitably come up during the planning stage. All the steps of the procedure are discussed and systematised, along with computational and practical implementation issues, in the context of a case study – the design of evacuation plans for the historical centre of an old European city

The cost and risk impacts of rerouting railroad shipments of hazardous materials

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Rail shipments of hazardous materials expose the population near the routes to the possibility of an accident resulting in a spill. Rail routes are determined by economic concerns such as route length and the revenue generated for the originating carrier. In this paper we consider an alternate routing strategy that takes accident risks into account. We employ a model to quantify rail transport risk and then use a weighted combination of cost and risk and generate alternate routes. In some cases the alternate routes achieve significantly lower risk values than the practical routes at a small incremental cost. While there are generally fewer rerouting alternatives for rail than for road transport, considering the possible consequences of a train derailment we argue that risk should be taken into account when selecting rail routes and that the cost–risk tradeoffs should be evaluated. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

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

Transportation of Dangerous Goods: Turkey Model

 The shortcomings in the implementation of hazardous substances transport in the world and in our country lead to very serious hazards. These problems lead to life, property and very serious environmental disasters. This is not only a matter of transportation, but also of the chemistry, textile and fuel industries. This study provides information on the legislation on dangerous goods transport in Turkey. It also contains technical information on hazardous substances, following the search of the relevant literature for the province of hazardous goods.  

The Risk Analysis Controversy: An Institutional Perspective

Risk analysis has generated considerable controversy in recent years as to its meaning with respect to societal decision making. The papers in this book highlight different aspects of the risk debate. In particular, confidence in expert statements on risk has diminished and there has been an increasing recognition of the difference between analysis of the risk associated with an event and people's preferences/values. These concerns are articulated in the papers and discussions contained here. The volume does not provide answers to the dilemma facing society but rather raises a set of questions which need to be considered

Designing a road network for hazardous materials shipments

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We consider the problem of designating hazardous materials routes in and through a major population center. Initially, we restrict our attention to a minimally connected network (a tree) where we can predict accurately the flows on the network. We formulate the tree design problem as an integer programming problem with an objective of minimizing the total transport risk. Such design problems of moderate size can be solved using commercial solvers. We then develop a simple construction heuristic to expand the solution of the tree design problem by adding road segments. Such additions provide carriers with routing choices, which usually increase risks but reduce costs. The heuristic adds paths incrementally, which allows local authorities to trade off risk and cost. We use the road network of the city of Ravenna, Italy, to demonstrate the solution of our integer programming model and our path-addition heuristic. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Spatial and Temporal Perspective on Road Traffic Accident Variations in Lagos Mainland, South-Western Nigeria

The research work uncovered the fact that the problem of road traffic accidents in Lagos Mainland more often than not occurs due to irresponsibility shown by road users and failure of the designated authorities and organizations to carry out their responsibilities. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique was employed in the examination of the statistical significance of the variation in the categories/degree (fatal, serious, minor) of accidents. Again analysis of variance technique was employed in the examination of the statistical significance of variance in the degree of accident over time (1998-2007) in Lagos Mainland. The result shows that there is a significant difference in the degree of accident overtime in Lagos Mainland. The study used mostly secondary Data, accident records and vehicular situation which was obtained from Nigerian Police Force and Federal Road Safety Commission. The data was obtained for a period of ten (10) years. The need for re-orientation of the land use pattern in the study area, better road network characteristics, Government should set up more police patrols for the highways in order to enforce road traffic regulation including speed limits and the need to establish Federal Road Safety Corps archive where accident records will be kept, collated and processed are desirable.Keywords: Lagos Mainland; traffic; Road, accident, variation

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