An analytics approach to dis-aggregate national freight data to estimate hazmat traffic on rail-links and at rail-yards in Canada

Numerous research initiatives have been undertaken in the risk assessment and risk management of rail hazardous materials (hazmat) transportation. However, the true benefits could not be demonstrated because of the absence of rail-link and rail-yard level information about hazmat volume. We propose an analytics based methodology to estimate yard and link level data, which is applied to the railroad network in Canada. The proposed methodology was used to solve numerous problem instances for the three chosen classes of hazmat responsible for moving over 80% of hazmat shipments in Canada. The exercise enabled us to identify the hot-spots in the railroad network, to examine the changes in the volume-based ranking of various rail-yards and rail-links as a result of geographical shifts in hazmat supplies over the next decade, and to investigate the impact of new pipeline projects on rail crude oil shipments.