Designing emergency response network for rail hazmat shipments under uncertainties: Optimization model and case study

Railroad is one of the primary transportation modes for hazardous materials (hazmat) shipments in North America. Designing an emergency response network capable of providing commensurate response is one of the primary levers to contain (or mitigate) the adverse consequences from rail hazmat incidents. To this end, we propose a two-stage stochastic programming model to determine the location of response facilities and equipment packages to be …