Journal of Hazardous Materials 227–228 (2012) 88–96 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Hazardous Materials j our na l ho me p age: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhazmat A comprehensive risk assessment framework for offsite transportation of inflammable hazardous waste Arup Das a , A.K. Gupta b,∗ , T.N. Mazumder a a Department of Architecture & Regional Planning, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India b Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, West Bengal, India h i g h l i g h t s ◮ Methodology for designing an accident index of links in a network based on a new aggregation operator. ◮ Impact assessment due to a volatile cloud explosion (VCE) showing share of adjoining population affected. ◮ Vulnerability assessment based on mortality and morbidity of adjoining population measured using disability adjusted life years (DALYs). a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 19 January 2012 Received in revised form 2 May 2012 Accepted 3 May 2012 Available online 11 May 2012 Keywords: Accident index Risk assessment Volatile cloud explosion Mortality Morbidity a b s t r a c t A framework for risk assessment due to offsite transportation of hazardous wastes is designed based on the type of event that can be triggered from an accident of a hazardous waste carrier. The objective of this study is to design a framework for computing the risk to population associated with offsite transporta- tion of inflammable and volatile wastes. The framework is based on traditional definition of risk and is designed for conditions where accident databases are not available. The probability based variable in risk assessment framework is substituted by a composite accident index proposed in this study. The frame- work computes the impacts due to a volatile cloud explosion based on TNO Multi-energy model. The methodology also estimates the vulnerable population in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALY) which takes into consideration the demographic profile of the population and the degree of injury on mortality and morbidity sustained. The methodology is illustrated using a case study of a pharmaceutical industry in the Kolkata metropoli- tan area. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Increased consumption of consumer goods has led to increased manufacturing activities. Many of the manufacturing activities not only involve hazardous materials, but also generate sizeable quan- tities of hazardous wastes. Transfer of all such hazardous wastes generated to disposal facilities has been a major concern for stake- holders in hazardous waste management and researchers [1–4]. The methodology for routing hazardous wastes should not only take into account the attributes concerned with offsite transporta- tion of the waste, but also consider the risk these wastes pose on their immediate surroundings. The risk due to offsite transportation of hazardous wastes is dependent on the type of waste transferred, the mode of trans- fer, the environmental conditions and the physical factors like ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 3222 283428; fax: +91 3222 255303. E-mail addresses: arup.archi@gmail.com (A. Das), agupta@civil.iitkgp.ernet.in (A.K. Gupta), taraknm@arp.iitkgp.ernet.in (T.N. Mazumder). roads, and traffic characteristics of the route adopted. The risk assessment framework can be broadly categorized under three cat- egories, namely the traditional definition of risk, the alternative definition of risk and the axiomatic approach to risk definition [5]. The traditional risk or the societal risk along a link (i–j) on a road network is given by the product of the probability of occurrence of an event (due to an accident) and the consequence of that event. It can be estimated using Eq. (1). R i-j = p i-j × C i-j (1) where, R i–j is the risk along a link joining two nodes i and j, p i–j is the probability of occurrence of an event in the link between i–j and C i–j is the consequence of the event along the link, measured in terms of population affected. Traditional definition of risk has been widely used for risk assessment during transportation of hazardous substances [6–11]. It estimates the probable outcomes of an event and is sim- ple to compute. Alternative risk definitions can be further classified into five sub-categories. The first three, i.e. incident 0304-3894/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2012.05.014