Track: Logistics, Transport and Traffic Management

Abstract

Transportation of hazardous materials (Hazmat for short) has always raised authorities’ concerns about the potential risks to humans and environment. But Hazmat transportation plays an important role to the economy in both developed and developing countries. In addition to the selection of routes from the origin to destination, Hazmat transportation often includes facilities that may also known as the sources of potential risks for environment. Thus, it is necessary to address the integration of locating and routing decisions from both economic and safety aspects. The mail purpose of the present paper is to develop a mathematical model to find optimum sites for the construction of fuel distribution centers as well as to determine different states of lifetime for the construction of those during the operating period to reduce the total costs of the project. Both construction and transportation costs are given based on the time value of money which is the contribution of the present research work. The objective function is defined at two levels in which the first level specifies the total network risk and the second level aims to find the construction sites with their respective lifetime considering the value of the establishing and operating costs. The proposed model has been validated using experimental data in the selected case study of the northwest region of Iran. The results revealed that considering time value of money in Hazmat transport planning plays a significant role over locating the optimum sites as fuel distribution centers, so local or national authorities who are dealing with Hazmat transportation can utilize the proposed model to find the best locations of fuel distribution centers.