An accident risk-based approach for hazmat transportation decision making

Transportation of hazardous materials (hazmats) is always risky and vulnerable to many types of accidents. In this paper, decisions made on the amount of each hazmat that can be transported via different modes of transportation systems are based on the accident consequence risks. The routes between supplier and consumer nodes are specified in advance, and each route is divided into segments having different respective risks of accident. The objectives of the resulting problem are to maximize the total net monetary value of transportation and to minimize the total segments' risks. We present Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation to assess the expected value of accident and consequence rates. The application and efficiency of the proposed model are illustrated by a realistic numerical example.