01518752

Component

Railroads safely and efficiently transport hazardous materials. While the society derives significant benefits from rail transport of hazardous materials, the associated accident risks must be appropriately managed. There is growing interest from the government, railroad industry and public to optimize all approaches to effectively reduce hazardous materials transportation risk. A hazardous materials release incident can be due to various accident causes, among which broken rails are the most frequent causes. Ultrasonic rail defect inspection is commonly used to prevent broken-rail-caused train accidents, thereby reducing hazardous materials transportation risk. However, little prior research has been conducted to quantify the relationship between hazardous materials release risk and rail defect inspection frequency, nor how to optimize rail inspection schedules to maximize risk reduction across a range of resource availability. In this paper, a decision support tool is developed to determine the optimal rail defect inspection frequency of different track segments in order to reduce route risk in the most cost-efficient manner. The methodology and results are intended to assist decision makers for local, regional and system-wide risk management of hazardous materials transportation by rail.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AR060 Railway Maintenance. Alternate title: Optimization of Rail Inspection to Reduce the Risk of Rail Transport of Hazardous Materials.

01503729

14-0230

English

0000-0002-4348-7432

20p

2014

Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Decision support systems; Defects; Hazardous materials; Inspection; Maintenance of way; Railroad rails; Railroad transportation; Risk management

Maintenance and Preservation; Railroads; Safety and Human Factors; I61: Equipment and Maintenance Methods

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2014 Paper #14-0230

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 27 2014 2:11PM