Examining Multiple Dangerous Goods Routing Criteria Within GIS-Based Framework in British Columbia, Canada

This study identifies and formulates some of the most common dangerous goods (DG) routing criteria and considers two methods for determining the impact zone (IZ) of a DG incident. To make large-scale implementation possible, readily available datasets that are unique to the province of British Columbia were incorporated into a GIS environment to determine the optimal route. Since routing criteria attempt to characterize risk based on different objectives, which might be conflicting, the tradeoffs among different routing criteria are examined. Moreover, two methods to create the impact zones were considered (i) the emergency response guidelines (ERG) isolation and protection action distances; and (ii) a plume dispersion model to effectively incorporate climate conditions, release quantities, DG types, and topography into modeling the release, explosion, or dispersion of DG. A case study was used to demonstrate the differences between the routing criteria as well as using different methods to identify the impact zone. In the case study, three alternative routes were considered for transporting a chlorine shipment between an O-D pair. The ERG and plume dispersion methods produced notably different routing results. Also, there were considerable differences in results among the various routing criteria.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • El-Basyouny, Karim
  • Cheng, Derek
  • Lim, Clark Cheun-il
  • Sayed, Tarek
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2010-1-10 to 2010-1-14
• Date: 2010

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: DVD
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 24p
• Monograph Title: TRB 89th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Disaster preparedness; Emergency response time; Freight traffic; Geographic information systems; Hazardous materials; Risk assessment; Route choice
• Geographic Terms: British Columbia
• Subject Areas: Freight Transportation; Security and Emergencies;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01153553
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 10-0234
• Files: BTRIS, TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Mar 31 2010 7:46AM