A Bi-Objective Approach to Evaluate Highway Routing and Regulatory Strategies for Hazardous Materials Transportation

Abstract

Hazardous materials (hazmat) transportation is of concern to policymakers because of the serious safety, health, and environmental risks associated with the release of hazmat. One effective approach to minimize risks associated with hazmat transport is the prohibition of hazmat transportation on higher risk links that either pose safety hazards or increased exposure by traversing densely populated areas. Because of high risk, there are multiple stakeholders involved in hazmat transportation. While shippers and carriers are directly involved in making routing decisions, regulatory agencies influence this decision by imposing routing restrictions. In this paper, we apply a bi-objective shortest path problem to evaluate routing and regulation plans for hazmat transportation. We characterize the cost objective as the shortest path between an origin and a destination. The risk objective is to minimize the risk of exposure by restricting the link with the highest risk on the best available path from an origin to a destination. We formulate the bi-objective model and apply it to a test network. Solutions consider multiple origin-destination pairs and present a non-dominated frontier to establish routing and regulatory strategies for hazmat transportation.