Mitigation of Hazardous Materials Transport Risk via Road Network Design
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Date: 10-16-2008
Start Time:
1:00pm
End Time: 2:00pm
Speaker: Vedat Verter, Desautels Faculty of Management: McGill University
Location: 303 Mudd
ABSTRACT
Hazardous materials (hazmats) are an integral part of our industrialized lifestyle and large quantities of them need to be transported between the points of their production to the points of their consumption or disposal. Although the transportation sector is mostly deregulated, hazmat shipments remain regulated by government agencies in many countries, mainly due to the associated public and environmental risks. One of the policy tools that are available to a government agency is to close certain road segments to the shipments that involve certain types of hazmats.
The presentation will focus on three alternative approaches for modeling and solving the regulators’ problem of identifying the most appropriate road segments to apply such curfews while maintaining the economic viability of the sector and minimizing the population exposure to hazmat transport risks. These approaches involve the use of (i) a bilevel programming model, (ii) a path-based formulation, and (iii) a tariff-based model for hazmat network design. Our findings through the implementation of these alternative approaches on the highway networks of the provinces of Quebec and Ontario in Canada will also be discussed.
BIO
Vedat Verter is an Associate Professor of Operations Management at Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University. He is also an Associate Member of McGill’s School of Environment and an Adjunct Professor at Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa. Professor Verter’s research focuses on supply chain design, hazardous materials logistics, sustainable supply chains and healthcare operations management. His work in these four areas is well recognized through top tier journal publications as well as invited presentations around the globe. Professor Verter is currently the Director of McGill’s Health Management Consortium and the Founding President of the POMS College of Healthcare Operations Management.