Location-routing model of hazardous materials distribution system based on risk bottleneck

During the last two decades or so, modern societies have experienced an increasing public awareness of environmental issues and concern for the long lasting effects that human polluting activities may have on the environment. Under this condition, people begin to focus on the research on mathematical modeling approaches to aid in analyzing hazardous materials (HAZMAT) logistics decisions. Vast literature has been devoted to this field, but people used to neglect the real situation of logistics distribution network. This disadvantage limited the application of these researches. In this paper, we focus on the risk bottleneck of logistics network and do some research on HAZMAT logistics system. First, we analyze three main objectives - cost minimization, potential risk minimization and risk equity maximization and give assumptions and notations used in this paper, and then present a multi-objective approach to assist decision makers in analyzing combined location/routing decisions involving HAZMAT. After that, a heuristic algorithm is proposed and at the end of this paper we give a numerical example.