(295f) Emergency Response Network Optimization to Reduce Environment Impact for Potential Chemical Transportation Accident

Chemical transportation deals with toxic or hazardous chemicals, which presents a high potential of dangerous accidents such as explosion or toxic gas leakage. The chemical transportation accident will make severe impacts on the environment of surrounding community. The current guideline of chemical transportation management focus on the transportation safety based on the comprehensive consideration of population distribution, roadway safety and traffic congestion while it neglects one important part of emergency response network optimization. Such kind of optimization under specific weather condition is of great significance in order to reduce its potential impact to the densely populated area and regional environment.

In this study, a methodology is developed for risk assessment and dynamic optimization for the emergency response network for potential chemical transportation accident. The whole problem is set into a grid network. Afterwards, geographic and meteorological parameters have been assigned.  It will evaluate the potential risk under specific climate conditions and the physical and chemical property of the transported material will be identified. This optimization problem involves two objectives which aims to achieve the minimal emergency response time and the minimal environment impact to the surrounding regions. The modeling has also included the constraints of transportation routes, transportation capacity and capability, atmosphere dispersion or aqueous transport of released pollutant. Then the developed MINLP model will be proceeded to achieve the optimal emergency response planning with the minimal potential impact to the environment of populated zones.