A Risk-Analysis-Based Routing Methodology for the Transportation of Hazardous Materials. Sarah Bonvicini, Paolo Leonelli and Gigliola Spadoni, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica, Mineraria e delle Tecnologie Ambientali, Università di Bologna, v.le del Risorgimento 2, I-40136-Bologna (Italy), telephone +39 51 6443138, fax +39 51 581200, e-mail bonvi@dicm0.ing.unibo.it
Due to the increasing public awareness of the potential risks associated with the transportation of hazardous materials, the routing of hazardous materials shipments has become an issue of major importance and thus an active area of research. This paper presents a new routing model that decision makers from both industry and government can use to solve hazardous materials logistical problems.
The main features of this new procedure, which has been developed till now for the case of a single substance and of multiple-origins-multiple-destinations, are briefly outlined here. First of all it is necessary to model the transportation network as a graph with nodes and edges. Each edge a cost is assigned, which comprises both transportation costs and risk costs; furthermore each edge a maximum admissible flow, i.e. a maximum vehicle capacity is given.
Transportation costs are out-of pocket expenses of a single shipment on a link, while risk costs are the costs of the potential fatalities due to an accident occurring on the link in examination. The vehicle capacity is determined by the compliance with transportation risk criteria based on both individual and societal risk acceptability values.
The optimal solution, found by solving a 'minimum cost flow problem', is composed by paths, which minimise the transportation costs and comply with the flow limitations. Test results are presented for the case of toxic gases shipments. Finally further extensions of the problems are suggested and discussed.
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