Risk Assessment of Hazmat Road Transportation Considering Environmental Risk under Time-Varying Conditions

Abstract

Hazardous materials shipments are integral to the development of industrial countries. Significant casualties and severe environmental pollution quickly ensue when accidents occur. Currently, relevant research on risk assessment of hazardous materials’ road transportation remains limited when both the population exposure risk and environmental risk are considered, especially in regard to analyzing the differences of accident impacts in different populations and environments. This paper adopts a Gaussian plume model to simulate dynamic areas at three levels of population exposure and assesses the pollution scope of air, groundwater, lakes, and rivers with a variety of diffusion models. Then, we utilize various costs to analyze the differences of accident impacts in population exposure and environmental pollution. Finally, a risk assessment model of hazardous materials road transportation under time-varying conditions is presented by considering the bearing capacity of the assessed area. Furthermore, this model is applied to a case study involving a risk assessment of hazardous materials transportation of a highly populated metropolitan area of Shanghai, China. The resulting analyses reveal that the safety of hazardous materials transportation could be effectively improved by controlling certain model parameters and avoiding road segments with a high risk of catastrophic accident consequences.