A Decision Support Scheme for Safe and Efficient Transportation of Hazardous Materials

The demand for hazardous materials (HazMat) logistics is on the rise, and the importance of safety engineering of HazMat logistics is clear. Freight services based on intelligent transportation systems (ITS) offer a more secure, efficient, and environmentally-friendly method of HazMat logistics. At the same time, the voice of digital transformation (DX) in logistics continues to grow. However, there are currently some barriers to the digital transformation of the HazMat logistics industry, in which safety is always prioritized. One of the issues is how to promote the use of information technology in the logistics business process in a reasonable and orderly manner, given limited funds and technology, while also ensuring safety and improving the business process. Existing safety analysis methods, such as the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) and its quantitative expansion, can be used to identify safety risks and make safety recommendations for business process improvement, but they cannot assist us with the rationale for DX decision making. To close the gap, we present in this article an optimization method of HazMat transportation safety engineering based on FRAM, which will assist HazMat logistics companies in making decisions regarding the implementation of ITS. We use the HazMat transportation of a Japanese logistics company as an example to verify and validate the proposed decision support scheme.