Development of an Inland Marine Transportation Risk Management Information System

Abstract

Historically, inland marine transportation has been one of the most efficient and reliable modes of commercial freight transportation. However, hazardous material shipments have become more common on inland waterways, creating concerns about the dissemination of shipment information to land-based emergency responders immediately following an incident. Marine transportation accidents have demonstrated that a spill involving hazardous materials near a major urban area can have devastating consequences. For these reasons a prototypical decision support system for inland marine transportation risk management has been developed. The system is designed to support real-time response as well as planning decisions such as risk resource allocation and evaluation of potential response strategies. It can be applied to barge accidents as well as counterterrorism planning activities. The system is based on the integration of geographic information systems (GIS), database management systems, Global Positioning Systems, and the Internet. In the event of an incident, this system enables en route responders to view incident details via an Internet GIS map service. The map service contains data that describe land use, population, and dispersion results for air and surface water at downstream intakes. To illustrate system capability, a recent accident is re-created to show how the response could have been improved with system access. A case study showing planning applications is also provided.

Development of a GIS-based Spill Management Information System

“…Although spill effects propagate through other pathways, the most acute and immediately dangerous short-term effects advance through these mediums [2]. The major components of SMIS include Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI, Redlands, CA) ArcView Version 8.2 GIS, the two-dimensional (2-D) surface water quality and hydrodynamic model CE-QUAL-W2 Version 3.1 developed by USACE, the atmospheric dispersion modeling suite Computer-Aided Management of Emergency Operations (CAMEO) developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and customized Visual Basic (VB) functions for data input, model execution, and results presentation (Fig.…”

“…Resultantly, facility and vessel operators benefit from having access to a comprehensive chemical database, rapidly accessible in the event of a release or human contact with the material [8]. Dobbins and Abkowitz [2] further explore the effectiveness of this approach through the development of a prototype decision support system (DSS) employing global positioning system (GPS), GIS, and the Internet for inland waterway barge accidents. In the event of an incident, this system enables en-route responders to view incident details via an Internet GIS map service.…”

“…Certain relationships and operational trends are more easily conveyed in a geographic context than in a traditional tabular format [1]. GIS functionality may also be delivered through a standard Internet browser, a valuable feature enabling the distribution of uniform and current data [2]. GIS has been broadly adopted for use with predictive models providing functions for data storage, calculation of required parameters, data manipulation, and output processing [3].…”

Interfacing Gis With Water Resource Models: A State-of-the-Art Review

“…TINs have a continuous surface of connected triangles with known elevations at the vertices of each triangle. Several research efforts are making significant advances in using vector data in water resource models (Kopp, 1998;Hellweger and Maidment, 1999;Dobbins and Abkowitz, 2002;E.B. Daniel, J.P. Dobbins, E.J.…”

“…As such, "linkage" approaches remain viable when interfacing a variety of models to GIS within applications where computational delay is acceptable. Dobbins and Abkowitz (2002) illustrate the effectiveness of a linkage structure in the development of an inland marine risk management information system. The system was designed to support real-time response to barge accidents or terrorism activities and is based on the interfacing of GIS, databse management systems, global positioning systems, and the Internet.…”