Ebook: Advanced Technologies and Methodologies for Risk Management in the Global Transport of Dangerous Goods

In the last few years, logistics has become a strategic factor for development and competition. In fact, Research and Development activities have traditionally faced the management of Supply Chain and International Transport focussing on two main aspects: speed and efficiency. However, several vulnerabilities have recently been highlighted under a safety and security viewpoint. The weakness of the logistic chains has become more evident with the beginning of the new millennium. Terrorist attacks, such as 11/09 in the USA have caused the introduction of new rules and procedures, which affect the overall logistics showing the vulnerability of the global economy. So, nowadays, it would appear anachronistic to carry out an exhaustive research activity on the supply chain with no relation to the various typologies of risk, which may affect it.

CIELI, the Italian Excellence Centre on Integrated Logistics, which was founded at Genoa University in autumn 2003, studies the interactions between Logistics and Safety/Security aspects among its main lines of research, with the main specific goal of modelling the components of risk, and the relationships among various parameters and variables, depending on market evolution, on geographic position and socioeconomic and cultural appearance, on commercial practices and legislations/local regulations, on productive and technological solutions, on decision-making development for innovative analysis models of awkward risks to its connection with the optimization of logistic chain. Supply support is necessary for driving decisions oriented to moderate business choices, national politics and international regulations and, in this context, to supply some models that pass from qualitative esteem to quantitative analysis able to consider all operated choice implications.

Since CIELI aims to become a reference centre for Europe for the overall Mediterranean area as regards research in the field of logistics and transport planning and management, CIELI has started to find research opportunities to collaborate with different relevant research actors. One important opportunity was the NATO Science for Peace Programme, where the NATO Human and Societal Dynamics Panel approved a joint proposal by CIELI and the University of Mohammedia in Morocco under the scientific contact of Professor Azedine Boulmakoul. The proposal was related to the organisation of a workshop, that was then effectively organised in Genoa on 25–26 October 2007, with the subject “Advanced technologies and methodologies for risk management in the global transport of dangerous goods”. In fact, dangerous goods transport probably represents by definition the most vulnerable aspect in global logistics and transportation activities. The workshop represented the test bed to collect different Italian, Moroccan and world experiences of the problem of dangerous goods transport, and to compare different approaches. The main result of the workshop was the creation of an international group working on this subject, whose dimension is still increasing. Some of the experiences that were collected in the workshop have been reported in this book, which may effectively represent the current status of research on dangerous goods transport. In this respect, CIELI, University of Mohammedia and all participants are grateful to NATO, and specifically to the Human and Societal Dynamics Panel, headed by Prof. Carvalho Rodrigues for being given this opportunity.

I also wish to express my gratitude to Prof. Roberto Sacile for the organization work and to all participants that attended the workshop and had the fundamental opportunity to share knowledge and practices in Genoa, a city that has a long and sound experience in traffic management as well as historical and artistic charm.

Prof. Pier Paolo Puliafito

Director of CIELI, The Italian Excellence Centre on Integrated Logistics, University of Genova, Via Bensa, 1, 16124 Genova, Italy

France and Italy are characterized by a huge flow of Dangerous Goods carried by trucks inside their own territory and between them and the European Union. It is well known that the Dangerous Goods Transport (DGT) leads risks for the population, the environment and the human activities, according to the experience feedback of the major accidents occurred during the last 30 years. Due to the particular damages caused by the different types of dangerous goods transported (explosions, toxic release, corrosion, radioactivity etc.) and of the potential subjects exposed to this phenomenon (population, environment, infrastructure etc.), risk prevention and emergency management necessitate the design and development of a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) dedicated to the various decision makers involved. This chapter aims to present the methodology that establishes the base of a SDSS dedicated to the risk assessment of a DGT accident and the evaluation of the consequences in order to provide to the decision makers the best information to support their decision. The first part of this chapter presents the definition of DGT accident risk on road, taking into account the specificities of the traffic flow, the weather conditions, the accident feedback in the selected infrastructure and its structural characteristics. The second part is related to an overview of the main phenomena that occur if an accident of DGT occurs, presenting the main model to estimate the effect of these phenomena on the population. The third part is the case study, in the city of Nice (French Riviera), which corresponds to the simulation of two scenarios of DGT accidents in two urbanized places and the damage assessment induced. The last part is a discussion about the interest of this methodology and its results for the public authorities, the Civil Protection and the motorway companies.

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.

Hazardous material transportation poses obvious hazards to environment, general public and response personnel. In this context, risk reduction can be achieved by analyzing and designing correctly the routing of shipments, by proper risk assessment procedure. HazMat transportation risk management must include appropriate emergency response services, limiting accident consequences. This paper presents a quantitative risk assessment approach to HazMat transportation, starting from an historical statistical analysis on road accidents. A methodological approach for the assessment of standard vehicle and dangerous good truck flows was applied to a pilot area in the North of Italy, allowing a statistical reinforced evaluation of route intrinsic enhancing/mitigating parameters. The results evidence the distribution of the risk along the different routes and the localization of high spots, with good accuracy and precision. Preventive and mitigating risk measures are discussed in depth, with particular reference to the optimization of emergency equipment (number of prompt action vehicles) by means of an unambiguous and consistent selection criterion that allows reduction of intervention time. Different risk mitigation options, based on changing route or designing alternative slip roads, in transport corridors or tunnels, are investigated as well. The presented approach can represent a useful tool not only to estimate transport risk, but also to define strategies for the reduction of risk (i.e. distribution and limitation of ADR road traffic, improvement of highway section, design of alternative routes) and emergency management.

In the last years, numerous accidents have made to lift the level of attention related to the safety in the road transportation of hazardous materials. Also in absence of serious wounded, the dangerousness of the interventions requires very long times for the restoration of the normal road circulation causing huge damages economic and strong discomforts to the users. The hazmat transportation is disciplined for a long time by the ADR. However it only concerns passive measures related to the vehicles, to the packing and the labelling of materials, but it does not prescribe provisions to adopt during the trip. The purpose of the present job is to furnish a wide overview of the risk forecast and prevention and of emergency activation measures resorting to the employment of technological and operational systems and especially to the decision support systems tools.

Uncertainty is intrinsic to decision-making. Decisions regarding the use of road networks in the transportation of hazardous materials are no exception. Commonly, cautious shipment of hazardous materials is focused on identifying a single safest route between a pair of points. Here we demonstrate that for repeated shipments, where there is complete uncertainty about link incident probabilities, the safest strategy is in general to use a mix of routes determined by the worst case scenario probabilities. Using game-theoretic approach embedded in a Defender-Attacker-Defender framework, it is shown that maximum exposure to risk can be significantly reduced by sharing shipments between routes. The approach posits predefined disruption, attack or failure scenarios and then considers how to use road network so as to minimize the maximum expected loss in the event these scenarios materialise. The properties of the optimality conditions are explored leading to the formulation of an equivalent linear programming problem. A solution algorithm suitable for use with standard traffic assignment software is presented together with a numerical example relating to the central London road network.

Intermodal transportation has sustained a promising growth rate over the past two decades and continues to be one of the rapidly growing segments of the transportation industry. Intermodal transportation is increasingly being used to move hazardous materials, and most of the studies underline the irreversible nature of this trend. In this paper, we make a first attempt to develop an understanding of the risk-cost-time trade-offs that underlie decisions pertaining to dangerous goods shipments via a rail-truck intermodal transportation system. A realistic case study that focuses on transportation of both dangerous goods and regular freight among one 100 shipper-receiver pairs in Canada is developed, and an intelligent enumeration algorithm to solve the problem is presented.

In this paper, we propose a real time mobile information system architecture for hazardous materials telegeomonitoring. We illustrate the integration of various software components and we give an object oriented model for overall system with real time considerations. The component-based development is also introduced with a framework of mobile object modeling on transportation network. In addition, a significant component giving multicriteria fuzzy routing is incorporated into a spatial decision support system (SDSS). Its allows analyses of risks and evaluation of routing strategies that minimize the transportation risk. Integrating the SDSS within our proposed system increases its performance and viability. A prototype system of HazMat transportation for Mohammedia city has been developed.

The distribution of petrol products to service stations is generally based on the receipt of orders by the service stations and on the daily optimisation of the deliveries by tank trucks. Recently, the technologic possibility to monitor remotely the level of the underground storage tanks in the service stations allows a new formulation of the problem, planning deliveries on the current level of the inventory rather than on orders. An original formulation of the problem is proposed joining in the objective function of the related mathematical programming formulation both the inventory and the routing costs. In the case study the proposed formulation is applied to evaluate the improvements of the performance of the distribution of petrol products by tank trucks when the central depot can receive in real-time the levels of the underground storage tanks. The results shows that the proposed approach would have allowed a reduction in the number of deliveries and in the overall amount of kilometres necessary for the deliveries themselves. The consequences are the decreasing both of the delivery costs and of the risk - for the people, their properties and the environment in the territory affected by this transportation.

What differentiates hazardous material (hazmat) shipments from the transport of other materials is the risk associated with an accidental release of the material. The paper concerns the problem of routing and scheduling hazmat in urban and suburban road networks. This problem involves conflicting objectives among interested parties: the shipping company, the client, the vehicle driver, the environment agency of the area, the population. In presence of conflicting interests, the use of a decision support system (DSS) is recommended. The paper outlines an ongoing work to develop a DSS based on a Geographical Information System (GIS) for hazmat transport in the city of Milan. We use a probabilistic risk assessment model, which takes into account, as route selection parameters, the probability of accidents and the consequences of an accident for each road segment. The model considers population, vulnerable facilities (schools, hospitals, …), territorial infrastructures (e.g. railways, electric lines), natural elements (water bodies, green areas, …), critical areas (e.g. areas which may be a target for a terrorist attack). An hazmat multi-objective route planner has been developed in Python language using ESRI ArcGIS to perform spatial analyses and to optimize the procedure. The planner, which is in a prototype phase, has been tested on Niguarda, an area of the city of Milan characterized by the presence of an important hospital.

We provide an overview for policy-makers and opinion leaders of the physical structure and of the governance structures and processes for electricity, gas and water supply, transport and systems for general information and communication services. We also summarize their vulnerabilities and the main drivers of these vulnerabilities, as well as possible political and institutional shortcomings. Based on our findings, we outline a number of technical, management and organizational strategies and policy options that may help to reduce the probability of disruption to these systems and consequent interruptions to the vital services they supply. We offer, additionally, some suggestions for areas in which further study may be needed before definitive policy recommendations can be made.

Transportation of radioactive materials takes on international character today: many countries those producing electric power at NPPs, need foreign sources of materials and service to support the fuel cycle. Ukraine is a party of multilateral international agreements related to cooperation in movement of nuclear materials. These agreements set forth the main principles of cooperation in radioactive material transportation and civil liability for nuclear damage that can be caused to the environment in transportation, procedure for mitigation of accident consequences, etc. Accident prevention at transportation of radioactive materials is of prime importance since this process is the most vulnerable from the terroristic threat standpoint.

This chapter, after briefly outlining the main features of hazmat transportation and related risk, presents a risk-based approach for planning and managing the hazmat flows on road infrastructures. A dynamic hazmat vehicle routing problem at a sub regional scale is considered modelling transport risk on each link of the network. The considered hazmat routing problem has been stated as a multi-objective mathematical programming problem. The information used in order to pose this dynamic routing problem is relevant to the link risk, the network structure, and the current (and foreseen) hazmat and generic traffic incoming and outgoing the network. It is assumed that the decision maker is a Public Authority which has the responsibility of controlling and managing the road network and traffic flows. The main objective of the Authority is to equalize the risk on the overall network and to minimize the risk for all kinds of road infrastructure users. A territorial analysis has been performed to characterize each link according to the induced risk assessment. A case study relevant to the District of Cuneo, in Northern Italy, is presented to validate the applicability of the approach.

The transport of Radioactive Materials (RM) and Radioactive Wastes (RAW) involves a potential radiological hazard. To ensure the safety of people, property and the environment, appropriate transport regulations to both domestic and international are necessary. The approved Regulation, their principles and objectives, are in order to ensure that the transport of Radioactive Materials is in compliance with IAEA regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Materials. Albanian Government on 27.05.1971 approved “The Regulation of “Safety Transport of Radioactive Materials and Radiation Protection by Ionising Radiation Sources” ^[1]. Already, this old regulation was abrogated and a new one so-called: “The Regulation of Safety Hazard Materials”; is in force since 18. 04. 1997 approved by Albanian authorities. In this Regulation exist some articles for the safety Transport of Radioactive Material. Since 2001, we have prepared the new Regulation of Safety Transport of RM & RAW in Albania Our Regulation establishes standards of safety, which provide an acceptable level of control of the radiation, criticality and thermal hazards persons, property and the environment that, are associated with the transport of Radioactive Materials. The total activity of radioactive substances transported in Albania (domestic and international) during 2006 has been some thousands Ci of unsealed & solid radioactive sources, mainly ^99mTc; ¹³¹I, ⁶⁰Co, ¹³⁷Cs, ²⁴¹Am etc., by import-export procedures, and approximately over 560 type A and Type B packages.

Systems for different kinds of energy resources transportation are potentially dangerous objects. In the design and operation of these systems, the possibility of improving the system's efficiency is very important to explore. The main way of improving efficiency is through optimisation. This paper describes the application of exergy topological models and, in particular, the graph of thermoeconomical expenditure for thermoeconomical optimal design of different kind of nets for energy supply -with circled (CNES) and tree shape (TSESN) structure. The questions of thermoeconomical optimisation of these nets , as well as suggested modelling algorithms, are illustrated in the numerical example of the optimisation of a energy supply system for a city with seven regions of energy consumption for CNES and for twelve regions for TSESN.

A preliminary approach to model the hazardous material vehicles flowing towards one critical road infrastructure is presented. Two different approaches are shown. The first one, macroscopic approach, aims to define a problem in which the state and the control variables correspond to the number of vehicles, for which the integrity condition may be relaxed, in order to obtain a continuous-variable decision problem. The second one considers a problem at a microscopic level, in which the granularity of the process is explicitly taken into account, so that the state and the control variables are directly related to each vehicle. Some preliminary results are shown on a case study referred to a highway connecting to a tunnel.