Transportation of hazardous materials

危险材料（hazmats）是任何发达社会不可或缺的一部分。 加拿大每天有74，000批危险物质，美国有800，000批。 虽然这些是所有运输方式的总和，但两国大约90%的货物是通过卡车和火车运输的。 在加拿大，火车运输的数量与卡车运输的数量相当，但大量关于危险物质的研究集中在公路运输上。 出于这一动机，我开发了一种危险品铁路运输的风险评估方法，这是独立的事故率，并建立了危险品量和后果之间的关系。 基于事故率的分析往往容易受到缺乏足够数据点的影响，但上述方法使我能够克服这一限制。 然后，风险评估方法被用来模拟铁路网络中货运列车的运营，其中货运涉及危险货物和普通货物。 通过这项发现补助金，我打算研究铁路，海运和多式联运框架中的危险品风险。 在铁路领域内，将研究风险的措施和缓解，新的有轨车闭塞技术的开发和实施，以及单元列车的调度。 将在海运的范围内研究风险评估、运输和风险成本的估计和分配以及集装箱船的调度。 在铁路-卡车多式联运系统背景下的优势条件、路径选择模型及其求解方法，以及对其他形式的多式联运的研究构成了多式联运的其他项目。 本提案的长期目标是开发评估和减轻危险品运输风险的方法和技术，并为管理人员和监管人员开发决策支持系统，以促进危险货物的安全运输。

Hazardous Materials (hazmats) are an integral part of any developed society.  There are 74,000 daily shipments of hazmats in Canada and 800,000 in the United States.  Although these are the aggregate numbers for all modes of transportation, roughly 90% of the shipments are moved by trucks and trains in both the countries.  In Canada the quantum moved by trains is rather comparable to that moved by trucks, but an overwhelming amount of research on hazmats focused on highway shipments.  Motivated by this I developed a risk assessment methodology for railroad transportation of hazmats, which was independent of accident rates and established a relation between hazmat volume and consequence.  Accident rate based analysis is often vulnerable to absence of enough data points, but the above methodology enabled me to tide over this limitation.  The risk assessment methodology was then used to model the operations of freight trains in a railroad network, where freight involved both hazardous and regular cargo.  Through this Discovery Grant, I intend to study hazmat risk in railroad, maritime and intermodal transportation frameworks.  Within the railroad domain, measures and mitigation of risk, development and implementation of a new railcar blocking technique, and scheduling of unit-trains would be studied.  Risk assessment, estimation and assignment of transportation and risk costs, and scheduling of container ships will be studied in context of maritime transportation.  Conditions of dominance, routing models and their solution methodologies in context of rail-truck intermodal transportation system, and investigating other forms of intermodalism constitute other projects in intermodal transportation.  The long term objective of this proposal is to develop methodologies and techniques for the assessment and mitigation of hazmat transportation risk, and also to develop decision support systems for managers and regulators to facilitate safe and secure transportation of hazardous shipments.