Quantitative risk analysis on rail transportation of hazardous materials

Iraj Mohammadfam, Esmaeil Zarei, Mohammad Yazdi, Kamran Gholamizadeh

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The hazardous nature of the chemical materials is of significant concern in the economic viability of rail transportation globally. The potential risks of these materials to cause severe health impairments and catastrophic accidents have been widely studied and reported. Moreover, several models have been employed for assessing the risks associated with transporting hazardous materials by rail. However, a more holistic, quantitative, and robust model should incorporate more potential risk-triggered criteria, especially those causing severe health loss and devastating consequences like vapor cloud explosion. This study develops a risk assessment model by incorporating potential health risk factors and the obstacle circumstances. The potential risk factors are population density, route distance from residential areas, and the availability of sensitive third parties for health consequences. The proposed model utilizes Bayesian networks for causality modeling of the material release scenarios and fuzzy set theory for estimating the health effects and severity impact coefficient. Finally, individual risk curves and safe distances from the railway are developed. A real rail system for gasoline transportation in Tehran is investigated to evaluate the model’s effectiveness. The study provides panoramic leverages for risk-managed decision-making for safely transporting hazardous material by rail.
Original languageEnglish
JournalMathematical Problems in Engineering
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Mar 2022

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Quantitative risk analysis on rail transportation of hazardous materials'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this