Author(s)

A. Romano & G. Romano

Abstract

The transportation of hazardous materials is a growing problem worldwide due to increasing transported volumes. In fact, as a consequence of industrial development, huge quantities of hazardous materials are yearly produced and obviously the production of them goes together with their transportation. Historical evidence has shown that accidents due to hazardous releases during transportation can lead to serious consequences as those created by fixed plants and therefore quantified risk analysis has to be carried out for transportation networks too. In this paper, a flexible decision support system is proposed to quantify risk due to different transportation of dangerous substances – road, rail, pipeline and inland waterways. First, a brief discussion is given on methodology adopted for evaluating risk. Then, the steps of the algorithm that has been implemented are sketched out to some details. Finally a description of the software is given out. Supported by a GIS-data bank, where parameters of the different transport networks are geo-referenced (i.e. incident rate, number of vehicles/year), the software provides to quantify Individual and Population Risk. Some applications in relation to possible risk mitigation are discussed, as the influence of a new road or reducing transported quantity, thus confirming in this way a possible use of this instrument by the decision maker in territorial planning and emergency management. Keywords: transportation, dangerous substances, risk analysis, road, GIS.

Keywords

transportation, dangerous substances, risk analysis, road, GIS