DEVELOPMENT OF A WEB-BASED ROUTING TOOL FOR ROAD TRANSPORT OF HAZARDOUS MATERIALS

In 2007, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration of the U. S. Department of Transportation funded a project to develop a Web-Based Hazmat Routing Tool to identify and select alternative routes for the transport of hazardous materials by truck. The current U. S. regulations provide procedures and criteria State and Indian Tribes routing authorities must follow to establish, maintain, and enforce NRHM routes. The goal of the project was to show the feasibility of developing a Web-Based Routing Tool that routing authorities or other organizations, including shippers, could use to compare routes and select a preferred route based on safety and security considerations. The tool was placed on a GIS platform that contains the routes, the population density along the routes, and, for the security assessment, the location of any iconic structures (national monuments or sports venues), and critical infrastructure (bridges and tunnels). The tool first evaluates the routes for safety using the route length, accident rate, and population density along the route. Security is evaluated by considering the distance traveled through urban areas defined has having a population greater than 3,000 people/mi2 (1,158 people/km2 ) and the distance from the routes to the iconic structures in comparison a weighted distance from police stations. Greater weights are given to structures with greater attractiveness. The paper describes the methodology in greater detail and shows how it can be used to compare and designate hazmat routes based on both safety and security considerations. The tool was used to provide data used in a report to Congress on hazardous material routing (Ref. 1).