ASSESSING THE RISK AND SAFETY IN THE TRANSPORTATION OF HAZARDOUS MATERIALS

Abstract

The transportation of hazardous materials is a broad and complex topic, which is made unmanageable by a morass of regulatory measures at several levels of government. Risk asessment methodologies provide the best means of helping community-level practitioners come to grips with local fears and perceptions. Current approaches to the development of risk assessment methods tend toward the relative rather than the absolute formulations needed by local authorities. The differences between these approaches are discussed. Although it is impractical to achieve a truly absolute risk- or safety-assessment model, an approach is suggested for a more realistic manner of determining an overall safety situation rather than simply risk-of-incident. By concentrating on the highway transportation mode for simplicity of analysis, a set of model formulations is developed that leads to a community safety assessment index. This index is, in turn, made up of a community preparedness index and a community risk index. The argument is made that risk assessment techniques as presently offered provide no distinction between these two means of measuring current safety (preparedness and risk), and do not distinguish between those variables within the control of communities and those beyond that control. A case study is presented for a hypothetical city, Newtown, New Guernsey, which illustrates how such a community assessment index might be calculated and how its results might be interpreted.

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