Risk assessment of hazardous materials transportation: A review of research progress in the last thirty years

In recent years, hazardous materials transportation accidents occur frequently, causing huge casualties and property losses. Risk assessment of hazardous materials trans-portation has been constantly investigated by researchers and decision-makers. In order to study the research progress of risk assessment of hazardous materials transportation, so as to better reveal relevant problems. This review systematically analyzes the existing literature, from 1991 to 2020, on risk assessment models and methods of hazardous ma-terials transportation, and segregates the relevant studies based on unimodal and inter-modal transportation systems. Additionally, an example is considered to analyze the characteristics of each risk assessment model of unimodal transportation, and a novel detailed classification is proposed for the risk assessment problems. The results indicate that the research on the risk assessment model of road transportation of hazardous ma-terials is comprehensive, whereas that based on the railway and intermodal trans-portations is deficient. In comparison with the traditional risk assessment model, the conditional value-at-risk model presents a flexible decision-making framework for deci-sion-makers and controls risk preference between risk neutrality and risk aversion. Owing to the difficulty in achieving door-to-door railway transportation and the increased risks associated with the intermodal transportation, the conclusion that the risk of railway and multimodal transportation of hazardous materials is lower than that of road trans-portation is not universal. Transport operators and governments can combine the ad-vantages of different transportation modes, such as low risk, low cost, high flexibility, and high reliability, to achieve public safety and improve the competence of the system. Based on the proposed classification, this review identifies the existing trends and research gaps and summarizes future research directions. (c) 2022 Periodical Offices of Chang'an University. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC -ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

Hazardous materials transportation accidents have been occurring frequently, leading to significant casualties and property losses. This review analyzes the research progress of risk assessment of hazardous materials transportation from 1991 to 2020. The results show that the research on risk assessment models for road transportation is comprehensive, while that for railway and intermodal transportation is insufficient. The conditional value-at-risk model provides a flexible decision-making framework. The conclusion that the risk of railway and multimodal transportation of hazardous materials is lower than that of road transportation is not universally applicable. The advantages of different transportation modes can be combined to improve the system's capabilities. The review identifies existing trends, research gaps, and future research directions.