Identifying geographically diverse routes for the transportation of hazardous materials

Often, the carrier/shipper of hazardous materials is interested in a collection of routes with approximately the same performances so that they can switch between different routes to avoid exposing the same population and potentially as a security measure. We develop a K shortest path algorithm for which the performance of each highway facility, with respect to paths, which represents an acceptable trade-off between geographic diversity and performance. These models are then applied to a realistic case study. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.