Assessing hazmat transportation risk for Istanbul metropolitan municipality

Abstract

The city of Istanbul, Turkey is a large metropolis with 13 million residents. Every day, trucks carrying hazardous goods (hazmat) in Istanbul expose risk to the residents as well as economic assets of the city. In this paper, we analyze Istanbul's hazmat transportation risk profile using risk analysis techniques and provide the authorities an interactive GIS-based decision support system. Past studies in this area mainly address long-haul hazmat transportation. Hence we introduce a new risk model that considers population exposure along a route and the duration of such exposure, the latter being variable due to the congested nature of road transportation in urban areas. Using this DSS, we produce a risk map of Istanbul and run several routing scenarios between selected hazmat shipment origins and destinations. Results suggest that the hazmat routes under the new model may not always match with how hazmat is usually transported in an urban area.