Generalized route planning approach for hazardous materials transportation with equity consideration

Abstract

Hazardous materials transportation should consider risk equity and transportation risk and cost. In the hazardous materials transportation process, we consider risk equity as an important condition in optimizing vehicle routing for the long-term transport of hazardous materials between single or multiple origin-destination pairs (O-D) to reduce the distribution difference of hazardous materials transportation risk over populated areas. First, a risk equity evaluation scheme is proposed to reflect the risk difference among the areas. The evaluation scheme uses standard deviation to measure the risk differences among populated areas. Second, a risk distribution equity model is proposed to decrease the risk difference among populated areas by adjusting the path frequency between O-D pairs for hazardous materials transportation. The model is converted into two sub models to facilitate decision-making, and an algorithm is provided for each sub model. Finally, we design a numerical example to verify the accuracy and rationality of the model and algorithm. The numerical example shows that the proposed model is essential and feasible for reducing the complexity and increasing the portability of the transportation process.