Identification and prioritization of hazardous material transportation strategies using DEA method

• Main Authors: Saeid Esmaeili, Mahdi Hosseinpour, Khashayar Sheikhi, Nader Naderi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Growing Science 2012-09-01
• Series: Management Science Letters
• Subjects: Hazardous material; Data envelopment analysis; SWOT
• Online Access: http://www.growingscience.com/msl/Vol2/msl_2012_220.pdf

Development of industries needs expansion of public transportation and, consequently, heavy transportation increases hazardous and dangerous transportation too. Therefore, we need to consider some strategies to reduce bad effects of transportation of hazardous materials such as road accidents. Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Treats (SWOT) analysis is an applicable method for designing strategies in this area. However, SWOT analysis does not provide specific strategies and it does not consider the efficiency and performance of each strategy. Applying a hybrid method of analyzing the strategies and their performance evaluation help decision makers select the best strategies based on the current limitations. In this paper, different strategies for hazardous transportation risk reduction are designed and relative efficiencies of all alternatives are compared using DEA method. The proposed model of this paper uses three inputs including implementation costs, operation and maintenance cost and operational and four outputs including accident rate reduction, fuel consumption reduction, employment rate increment and deaths number reduction. The results of the implementation using seven different strategies have yielded two important strategies including continuous improvement of vehicle standards, driving skills, transportation system quality, and loading methods and expansion of petroleum pipe network.