Optimal Location of Emergency Facility Sites for Railway Dangerous Goods Transportation under Uncertain Conditions

Railroad accidents involving dangerous goods (DG) need to be rescued quickly due to their hazardous nature. This paper proposes an emergency facility location model for the railway dangerous-goods transportation problem (RDGT-EFLP, abbreviated as EFLP). The EFLP model is based on an ellipsoidal robust model that introduces a robust control safety parameter ? to measure the risk preferences of decision makers and limits the range of uncertain demand, the range of uncertain service and the range of safety parameters to find the solution for siting emergency facilities, when the time and location of emergency events are unknown. The model is solved using a genetic algorithm (GA) and real data after abstraction. Finally, a comprehensive analysis of the solution results under different maximum overcoverages illustrates the feasibility and effectiveness of the model.

Automated summary

This paper proposes an emergency facility location model for the railway dangerous-goods transportation problem. The model is based on an ellipsoidal robust model and introduces a robust control safety parameter to measure the risk preferences of decision makers. It finds the solution for siting emergency facilities when the time and location of emergency events are unknown by limiting the range of uncertain demand, uncertain service, and safety parameters. The model is solved using a genetic algorithm and real data, and a comprehensive analysis of the solution results demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of the model under different maximum overcoverages.