Author(s)

S. Bonvicini & G. Spadoni

Abstract

In this paper results are presented and discussed about the analysis of the data of hazardous materials road transport accidents reported by the Canadian database D.G.A.I.S. (Dangerous Goods Accident Information System). The records of the database have been subdivided first of all on the basis of the transport phase to which they belong; then they have been classified by the accident typology and, for each type, by its primary cause. Subsequently accidents with hazmat release have been grouped considering the physical state of the spilled substance, in order to determine, basing on the leaked mass, the release categories and their occurrence probabilities. Finally the post-release event trees have been drawn and quantified for flammables. This work has allowed on one hand to determine the major causes of accidents and thus the actions to adopt for reducing the accident frequencies; on the other hand it has been possible to extract data for transport risk analysis, also suggesting useful improvements for bettering the quality of the information recorded by accident databases. Keywords: accident database, event tree, flammables, hazardous materials, road transport, spill, tank truck. 1 Introduction The analysis of an accident database can be performed with two aims. One of these is surely that of \“learning from experience” ([1, 2]), that is first of all to understand what are the causes of an accident, in order to pre-emptively undertake those safety measures which will lower the probability it will occur again, and, further, to comprehend what actions have been adopted (or should have been adopted) to limit the consequences of the accident once it has

Keywords

accident database, event tree, flammables, hazardous materials, road transport, spill, tank truck.