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Nowadays – particularly in systems dealing with hazardous materials (HAZMAT) – in addition to minimising the cost of operations in facility location and routing problems, the risk of these operations is considered an important objective. In this paper, a new mathematical model for the location and routing in facilities and disposal sites is proposed. Also, the risk and cost of transporting goods from facilities to customers is considered. The model minimises weighted sum of the cost and risk by answering these questions: (1) where to open the facilities which produce HAZMAT; (2) where to open disposal sites; (3) to which facilities every customer should be assigned; (4) to which disposal site each facility should be assigned; (5) which route a facility should choose to serve the customers; and (6) which route a facility should choose to reach a disposal site. A novel GA is applied to solve the mathematical model. The results show the robustness of GA in terms of finding high-quality non-dominated solutions and running time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The two-dimensional loading vehicle routing problem with partial conflicts combines two NP-hard problems: the classical vehicle routing problem and the two-dimensional bin-packing problem with partial conflicts. This new variant of transportation problems is inspired from hazardous materials classification and compatibilities, where some materials can be partially conflicting. In this case, they can be loaded together but an additional constraint on the distance separating them must be respected. We propose in this paper an NSGA-II algorithm to perform a bi-objective study in which the minimization of the total cost of transportation as well as the load balancing between different routes in terms of used area of vehicles are the considered objectives. The first results for this new problem are presented, using benchmarks available in the literature that have been adapted to deal with the problem. Moreover, the adding value of path relinking is proved with different statistical measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discusses the possibility of the occurrence of tunnel fire in the transportation of spent nuclear waste to a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada through railways. Information on a fire tunnel in Baltimore, Maryland on July 18, 2001 that involved a train with hazardous materials; Hypothetical consequences of a Baltimore-like accident that involves spent nuclear fuel; Routes being considered for the transportation of spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain.

The transportation of hazardous materials assumes a fundamental importance, especially in urban areas, in order to identify possible alternative routes and to choose the route with minimum risk. Therefore, considering minimization risk rather than minimization distance to prevent a potential danger being transformed into a real event is necessary. In this article , a geographic information system (GIS)–based solution approach is developed to quantify the factors on each link in the network that contribute to a possible route. Based on the origin and destination of each shipment, the risks associated with the routes that minimize (1) the transport distance, (2) the population exposure, (3) the probability of an incident, and (4) the emergency response are evaluated. Proposed risk models are applied to fuel-oil transportation problem between resource point and 78 gasoline stations through the road network of Gaziantep city center. Results show that the proposed framework can contribute to the thought processes of policy-makers and carriers when they evaluate possible routes in order to minimize damage for transporting fuel oil. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article describes a project sponsored by the Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program to determine the most promising emerging technologies for the safety and security of hazardous materials (hazmat) shipments. The project's focus was on hazmat transportation of all modes (i.e., highway, rail, marine, air, and pipeline). A requirements-based gap analysis methodology was utilized to screen and down-select an initially large number of potential candidate technologies. The methodology resulted in the identification of most promising emerging technology areas for further examination. Each of these technology areas was further characterized in terms of its applicability to hazmat transportation safety and security and its outlook for deployment. In addition to describing project activities and findings, the article offers a commentary on overarching considerations influencing the development and deployment of technologies with the potential to enhance hazmat transportation safety and security within the coming decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Events such as the World Trade Center attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the Minneapolis bridge collapse have affected society's perception of the risks affecting our lives. It has also led to the realization that a more systematic and holistic approach to risk management is needed, one that takes into consideration natural hazards, man made accidents, and intentional acts in a single context. This article discusses the early stage development of an all-hazards risk management (AHRM) approach designed to achieve this objective, taking hazardous materials transportation risk into consideration. Utilizing established assessment methods and data sources, relevant risks are expressed in monetary terms, creating a consistent basis from which one can identify those risks that warrant priority attention. An early stage application is presented, one involving an assessment of truck transportation of hazardous materials and earthquakes as two risks threatening several areas within the State of Tennessee, to illustrate the viability of implementing an AHRM approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The transportation of hazardous goods by road implies a risk for both humans and the environment, in that an accident involving a vehicle transporting this kind of material may cause extensive material and environmental damage and might even endanger lives. For this reason, both public and private entities (e.g., insurance companies) have a growing interest in studies that assess the risks associated with hazardous goods transportation This article describes a method for calculating these risks. The risk is determined on the basis of a calculation of the probability of the occurrence of an accident and the gravity of the damage, which is in turn a function of the potential damage inherent in the goods being transported taken with the vulnerability of the environmental medium in which the accident takes place. The mathematical model proposed is easily implemented in a geographical information system that will produce risk maps delimiting the more potentially conflictive stretches of roadway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outlines the responsibilities that must be met before shipments of unusually hazardous materials may be undertaken and Japan's compliance to these responsibilities. Description of the Japanese plutonium shipment that began in November 1992; Features of the precautionary principle; Discussion on the duty to prepare an environmental impact assessment.

To enforce rules regarding hazardous material transportation, regulating agencies need to make choices on where to inspect trucks on the underlying transportation network. If each inspection facility has a very large capacity, then the corresponding problem for locating 'm' facilities to inspect as many trucks as possible may be formulated as the m-cover problem. However, in the more practical case when each inspection station's capacity is limited, the problem can be formulated as a new capacitated facility location problem. Making use of some modeling assumptions, we present heuristics to solve this problem and provide some preliminary results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management of hazardous substances requires a combination of a large amount of complex technical and scientific facts, as well as subjective values, arbitrary judgement, and fuzzy policy objectives. The increasing size and complexity of activities involving hazardous substances requires higher emphasis on the risk assessment in potentially harmful operations. Furthermore, the transportation of hazardous materials poses a considerable risk to public health and the environment. There are many people involved, all with different kinds of information requirements. The analysis of alternative policies and operational choices for transportation by road, rail, or rivers, given a spatial pattern of production and storage facilities, consumption, environment and population, should be based on a detailed scientific assessment of numerous alternatives, involving technological, environmental, socio-economic and political elements in a comprehensive and directly usable form of risk analysis, This paper describes three information and decision support systems which improve the availability and fast access to relevant data and information, and support the quick and effective generation, display, analysis, evaluation and comparison of different alternatives. Some basic principles and building blocks are also discussed. The systems developed and implemented by IIASA's Advanced Computer Applications (ACA) project are: IRIMS, a decision-oriented prototype system for the management of hazardous substances and industrial risk. A transportation risk assessment system which has been developed for the region Haute Normandie (France). XENVIS, an interactive information and decision support system, applied to problems of industrial risk and hazardous substances management in The Netherlands. Common to all three systems is the integration of databases, modeling, and optimization techniques, the coupling with a geographical information system, as well as the use of symbolic user... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two models for hazardous routing are briefly described. A condition is derived which, if satisfied, ensures that the linear model and the nonlinear model generate the same solution path, and if not satisfied, provides a strategy for obtaining the optimal solution to the nonlinear problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that a multi-attribute utility (MAU) formulation of the single shipment, cost-exposure, hazardous materials optimal routing problem can conceivably be solved with traditional shortest path algorithms, We argue, however, that the parameter scaling the single attribute cost disufility function into the two attribute cost-exposure disutility function could not be estimated to more than an order of magnitude. In a numerical study using the Columbus, Ohio highway network, we see that such an estimate is not precise enough either to specify a unique optimal route or to screen out a substantial number of routes as suboptimal when the optimal route is to be other than the minimum cost or minimum risk of exposure route. The number of routes obtained when varying the parameter across its permissible range is small enough, however, that the MAU formulation can be thought of as one that generates "MAU noninferior routes" before interacting with the decision maker. We speculate on the impacts of extending the problem to multiple shipments and more attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solid waste transfer stations (SWTS) are facilities where municipal refuse is transferred from collection trucks to long-haul trucks for more economical shipping to distant landfills. In this paper, a multiobjective model for locating SWTS examines the tradeoffs between minimizing costs and public opposition. The cost objective combines the transshipment and the fixed-charge problems, while expected public opposition is modeled as a decreasing function of distance from the facility. We believe this is the first location model for any type of undesirable facility to use an opposition function derived empirically from opinion survey data (Rahman, et al., 1992). A case study of Phoenix, Arizona uses actual data on sites, zones, tonnages, costs, and local residential attitudes. The model is calibrated to historical budget data for accuracy and also to explore the model's sensitivity to various parameters. Six sets of multiobjective analyses generate noninferior tradeoff curves under various assumptions. They show that the City of Phoenix chose a noninferior compromise location, that substantial cost savings can be achieved with an SWTS, and that further research is warranted to explore the alternative of building numerous small SWTS instead of a single large one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the problem of developing effective routes for transporting hazardous materials for the case where the routing ends after the occurrence of the first accident. A multiple route situation is permitted, the objective being to minimize the expected risk of the first accident, with constraints on the accident probabilities, the expected a priori risk, the transportation cost, and the equity of risk. A column generation technique is used to generate heuristic solutions. A brief summary of our results from extensive computational testing, based on a "real-life" hazardous materials routing scenario, is presented. Also presented is an example problem that illustrates several features of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the safety of transporting hazardous materials by rail. Statistics from the Association of American Railroads; Recent efforts to prevent hazardous releases from train accidents; Legislative bill that calls for the increase of rail safety inspectors.