Risk Mitigation and Management Strategies for Routing Hazardous Materials over Railroad Network in Canada

Abstract

Railroad transportation of hazardous materials (hazmat) has grown significantly in recent years in Canada. Although rail is one of the safest modes for hazmat transport, the risk of catastrophic events such as the Lac Mégantic train disaster, does exist. In this thesis, we study a number of measures to manage and mitigate the risk associated with rail hazmat shipments. First, we propose a methodology that makes use of analytics to dis-aggregate national freight data to estimate hazmat traffic on rail-links and at rail-yards in Canada. Further, a focused analysis is conducted on crude oil rail shipments to develop long-term forecasts and evaluate the impact of proposed pipeline projects. Second, we present an emergency response planning problem, aimed at the effective and efficient response to rail hazmat incidents. A two-stage stochastic programming problem is solved over part of the Canadian railroad network, which provides recommendations on where to locate response facilities, and which equipment packages to stockpile at each facility. Finally, we study infrastructure investment as a strategy to mitigate the risk associated with rail hazmat shipments. This strategy is based on building new railway tracks to provide alternative routes to the riskiest parts of the network. Given the hierarchical relationship between the decisions made by regulatory agencies and railroad companies, a bilevel programming approach is used to identify the optimal set of infrastructure investment options given an allocated budget. Our computational experiments show that significant network-wide risk reduction is possible if hazardous shipments are routed using some of the proposed alternative rail tracks.