Characteristics, Cause, and Severity Analysis for Hazmat Transportation Risk Management

Abstract

The accidents caused by hazardous material during road transportation may result in catastrophic losses of lives and economics, as well as damages to the environment. Regarding the deficiencies in the information systems of hazmat transportation accidents, this study conducts a survey of 371 accidents with consequence Levels II to V involving road transportation in China from 2004–2018. The study proposes a comprehensive analysis framework for understanding the overall status associated with key factors of hazmat transportation in terms of characteristics, cause, and severity. By incorporating the adaptive data analysis techniques and tackling uncertainty, the preventative measures can be carried out for supporting safety management in hazmat transportation. Thus, this study firstly analyzed spatial–temporal trends to understand the major characteristics of hazmat transportation accidents. Secondly, it presented a quantitative description of the relation among the hazmat properties, accident characteristics, and the consequences of the accidents using the decision tree approach. Thirdly, an enhanced F-N curve-based analysis method that can describe the relationship between cumulative probability F and number of deaths N, was proposed under the power-law distribution and applied to several practical data sets for severity analysis. It can evaluate accident severity of hazmat material by road transportation while taking into account uncertainty in terms of data sources. Through the introduction of the as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP) principle for determining acceptable and tolerable levels, it is indicated that the F-N curves are above the tolerable line for most hazmat accident scenarios. The findings can provide an empirically supported theoretical basis for the decision-makers to take action to reduce accident frequencies and risks for effective hazmat transportation management.

Severity Analysis of Hazardous Material Road Transportation Crashes with a Bayesian Network Using Highway Safety Information System Data

“…Although many crashes occur during the daytime, crashes during midnight are more likely to cause fatal and severe injuries. According to past studies [ 4 , 9 , 12 , 46 ], poor visibility at night, fatigue, and distraction could be some of the potential causes.…”

“…Although conventional statistical methods have been proven effective in examining the relationships between HAZMAT crash severity and explanatory variables, they cannot reveal the underlying patterns and interplay of various factors [ 16 ]. In recent years, machine learning techniques, such as Bayesian networks [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ], clustering [ 21 , 22 ], support vector machines [ 23 ], decision trees [ 4 , 24 ], random forests [ 25 , 26 ], and association mining rules [ 27 , 28 ] have been widely used for crash data analysis. These non-parameter approaches do not require assumption among explanatory variables, and they have been identified as having greater flexibility in supporting in-depth crash analysis and safety decision-making.…”

“…Due to the special physical and chemical properties of HAZMAT, especially the potential risk of explosion, fire, and spillage during an accident, catastrophic crashes involving HAZMAT road transportation are often referred to as low probability with high consequence [ 4 ]. These crashes usually lead to tremendous loss of life and property, and the hazards to the environment and public safety should not be neglected.…”

Is the analysis of territorial compatibility in the vicinity of road hazmat transport routes a necessity for developing countries? A case study of Romania

“…Global trends in the quantity of hazardous materials (hereafter under the name of hazmats) transported by road vary, but there has generally been an increase in such transport in recent times [ [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] ]. This is particularly true for developing countries, where the demand for hazmat is growing at a faster rate than in developed countries [ 5 ].…”

Cost and Risk Prediction in Road Transportation of Hazmat by ANFIS Trained with PSO, FA, HBBO and ICA

“…Indeed, other effective tool that can used in transportation process is risk assessment. Risk assessment is a study of probability of risk occurrence and its consequences, many of study have been conducted in this field [5,6]. Chen et al [7].…”