An approach for road, railway, pipeline routing problem in hazardous materials transportation using multiple criteria

Hazardous materials transportation is risky and an accident at any point of route can lead to severe consequences including fatalities, injuries, and environmental degradation. Routing hazardous materials is one of the main strategies to reduce the risk of hazardous materials transportation. This paper proposes an optimization cost-risk model in hazardous material routing problem and compares route on road, railway and pipeline transportation network. The cost is determined based on distance characteristic of road, railway and pipeline industry and the risk is assessed considering the potential impacts of hazardous materials transportation on the population, environment, and landmarks. The proposed method uses route distance, impact area, impact population, river, lake, and airport that are located in impact area as criterion to find optimal routes. The proposed method is applied to crude oil transportation in road, railway, and pipeline network in U.S. and Canada to demonstrate its applicability. The results show considering route distance, impact area, impact population, and length of river near the route criteria, the route on pipeline network, the route on rail network, the route on pipeline network, and the route on road network is optimal.