Routing for Hazardous Materials Transportation in Urban Areas

Abstract

Hazardous materials (HAZMAT) are important for daily production in cities, which usually have a high population. To avoid the threat to public safety and security, the routes for HAZMAT transportation should be planned legitimately by mitigating the maximum risk to population centers. For the objective of min-max local risk in urban areas, this study has newly proposed an optimization model where the service of a link for HAZMAT transportation was taken as the key decision variable. Correspondingly, the symmetric problem of min-max optimization takes significant meanings. Moreover, in consideration of the work load of solving the model under a lot of decision variables, a heuristic algorithm was developed to obtain an optimal solution. Thereafter, a case study was made to test the proposed model and algorithm, and the results were compared with those generated by deterministic solving approaches. In addition, this research is able to be an effective reference for authorities on the management of HAZMAT transportation in urban areas.

Environmental Impact Modeling for Transportation of Hazardous Liquids

“…For this reason, the transport of dangerous goods is a permanent source of threats, not only to human life and health but also to other biotic components of the environment [1,2]. Researchers' attention in the field of specifics and risks of transport of dangerous goods (DG) in terms of basic physical properties and state of the commodity is most frequently divided into three main areas-transport of hazardous liquids [3][4][5], transport of hazardous gases (HG) [6,7] and transport of radioactive material [8,9]. Research in each of these areas is highly specific.…”