Current Hazardous Materials Transportation Research and Future Needs (2012)

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Current Hazardous Materials Transportation Research and Future Needs April 17, 2012 99 for the areas in conflict; (d) analyze the impacts of the varying regulations on the pipeline industry in the context of the anticipated benefits; (e) provide a path forward toward standardized regulations, where appropriate; and (f) determine the impact that standardizing regulations would have on government and industry. Estimated project budget: $200,000 6.3.9.2. Development of Guidance Documents for State and Local Pipeline Oversight and Response Initial response to a pipeline incident can be hampered by several factors on the state and local level. Because issues related to pipeline transportation fall largely under the jurisdiction of the federal government, state and local emergency planners and responders rarely focus on pipeline response. Similarly, because pipelines are operated by private firms and tend to be out of view, local governments are seldom aware of the condition of pipelines within their jurisdiction, despite the threats commonly posed by changes in local land use and construction. As such, pipeline incidents are likely to catch many local governments by surprise. When an incident does occur along a pipeline, the responsibility for initial actions may be unclear, particularly when an incident in one state or local jurisdiction affects an unrelated jurisdiction at some distance down the pipeline. Additionally, though federal responsibility for pipelines rests with the USDOT, responsible officials for pipelines at a state level (or local level, where applicable), can be a part of any number of government organizations, and tends to vary from state to state. This variation in the organization of responsibility within governments can hinder coordination among officials from different jurisdictions, slowing the critical initial response time. The objective for this research is to produce a guidance document outlining (a) an optimal standard for the organization of pipeline oversight within state and local governments, (b) guidelines for assigning responsibility for initial response to pipeline events among state and local governments, (c) recommendations for improving the awareness of pipeline conditions by local planners, and (d) recommendations for the effective and continued incorporation of initial pipeline response into state and local emergency response plans. Estimated project budget: $200,000 7. Framework for Prioritizing Research Hazardous materials transportation is a very broad field. There are multiple modes of transportation. Safety, security, and efficiency are all important and can have complementary and competing relationships. Core elements that affect these three areas include carrier operations, shipper operations, material characteristics (including security sensitivity), packaging design and manufacture, human factors, regulatory structures, and human health and environmental impacts from potential releases (which involves routing issues). Defining a meaningful approach for prioritizing among research activities that are competing for limited funding is a challenge. The proposed research prioritization framework is comprised of key attributes that try to collectively cover the various perspectives. These attributes are discussed, followed by the framework that combines them together. The framework is designed to be flexible; allowing practitioners to adjust the

Current Hazardous Materials Transportation Research and Future Needs April 17, 2012 100 relative influence of each of the attributes and their values. The attributes address three areas: benefit of the project, applicability and focus, and optionally, project cost. Benefit • Research Priority – at first glance, this attribute might seem somewhat redundant with the intent of the prioritization scheme; however, this framework is designed to be useful well beyond the next round of project selection. For example, there is no definitive long-term preference between understanding underlying issues such as accident or release probability or assessing the best approaches to implementing a risk reduction strategy such as certain focused inspection or enforcement strategies. This attribute allows the HMCRP Technical Oversight Panel to apply their own subjective assessment of the benefits of research in a particular area without the need to weigh all the other relevant factors at the same time. This is the primary attribute for capturing stakeholder interest in specific research topics and whether they believe that the problem or issue to be researched is timely and important. • Significance of Expected Outcome – this key attribute is used to represent the type of product that the research is expected to produce and whether it closes a fundamental research gap, builds on recently completed work to advance the practice, or synthesizes prior work or provides insight into next steps. • Practical Implementation Potential – as the HMCRP is intended to address “real-world, day-to- day operational issues,” it is important to assess each research need or project in terms of how well it matches up with a practitioner’s ability to implement the expected results. Some projects may be very important to advance the state of the practice, but still will require further research before there are results for practical implementation. Such a project would not score very high for this attribute. • Clarity of Deliverables – when dealing with specific research needs or projects, the ability to precisely define project deliverables before the outset of research can be indicative of a project’s potential success and utility. Applicability and Focus • Primary Stakeholder Focus – as with the ‘modal applicability’ attribute, leveraging the value of research projects across multiple stakeholder groups is desired. Here, stakeholders are the shippers, carriers, regulators, and researchers. This is also consistent with the previously selected HMCRP projects that cover a wide range of topics and issues, rather than narrowing the focus on a smaller set of problems. Maintaining a broad stakeholder base will also aid in continued support for the HMCRP. • Modal Applicability – As the HMCRP is multi-modal, the emphasis should be on leveraging the cooperative aspects of research proposals. While there is plenty of research that is focused on only a single mode, it would be preferred if the research could support multiple modes. In other words, of two similarly ranked projects (based on the other attributes), it would be more desirable to pursue the one that affected more modes. Intermodal projects are captured through the consideration of all the modes involved, rather than an explicit value. • Material Focus – even though risk has an important likelihood component, there is a great amount of emphasis placed on issues involving high-hazard materials due to the extent of the potential consequences that could result from a release. This attribute can give enhanced

Current Hazardous Materials Transportation Research and Future Needs April 17, 2012 101 emphasis to high-hazard materials and to research that addresses the entire gamut of hazardous materials. This attribute addresses entire classes or types of materials in addition to high-hazard materials, for example, all corrosives or all liquid hazmat. Cost • Project Budget – the amount of funding that is required to successfully complete a research project. For many users of this prioritization scheme, cost can be used to select between projects that have been ranked without consideration to their estimated budget A high-cost project would need to provide significant value to be selected in this competitive environment. Of course, consideration should be given to whether the project can be divided into smaller projects, perhaps executed over several years and funding cycles. . In other words, projects are ranked on their benefits alone and then the available funding is allocated among the higher-ranking projects. Table 6 presents the proposed research prioritization framework with all its components, including several research-related attributes, the qualitative rankings/ratings possible for each attribute, and the attribute weights. Overall scores for each potential research need or project to be prioritized are determined by summing the product of the selected attribute value for that project and the weight assigned to that attribute. There is some conceptual overlap across the different attributes, but they help to emphasize the importance of some key elements. This framework is designed for prioritizing problem statements as well as specific projects. Table 6. Research Prioritization Framework Attribute Attribute Values Attribute Weight (%) Benefit Research Priority High-priority need 100 0.25 Medium-priority need 50 Low-priority need 20 Not a priority need 0 Significance of Expected Outcome Fills a fundamental knowledge gap 100 0.20 Builds on prior work to advance the practice 60 Synthesizes work in an area OR provides insight into next steps 30 Basic implementation of previously completed research 0 Practical Implementation Potential Direct applicability to practitioners, (e.g., checklist) 100 0.15 Practitioners can apply results with some additional work (e.g., guidebook) 80 Applicable to practitioners, but results are not formatted for direct implementation 40 Useful to researchers, but not practitioners 0

Current Hazardous Materials Transportation Research and Future Needs April 17, 2012 102 Attribute Attribute Values Attribute Weight (%) Clarity of Deliverables Clearly defined deliverables 100 0.10 Broad deliverables that can be more clearly defined with additional work before project initiation 70 Broad deliverables that can be more clearly defined after the project is in progress (e.g., prior to a second phase) 30 Poorly defined deliverables 0 Applicability and Focus Primary Stakeholder Focus Shippers, carriers, regulators/enforcement, responders, packaging manufacturers, infrastructure owners (any five) 100 0.05 Shippers, carriers, regulators/enforcement, responders, packaging manufacturers, infrastructure owners (any four) 80 Shippers, carriers, regulators/enforcement, responders, packaging manufacturers, infrastructure owners (any three) 60 Shippers, carriers, regulators/enforcement, responders, packaging manufacturers, infrastructure owners (any two) 40 Shippers, carriers, regulators/enforcement, responders, packaging manufacturers, infrastructure owners (any one) 20 Modal Applicability All modes (highway, rail, maritime, air, pipeline) or not mode-specific 100 0.05 Three or four modes 60 Two modes 30 Single mode 10 Material Focus Applicable to all or most high-hazard materials 100 0.05 Applicable to all/any hazmat OR one or two high- hazard materials 70 Applicable to a type of non-high-hazard hazmat (e.g., all liquid hazmat, all corrosive materials) 40 Applicable to only specific (and non-high-hazard) materials 20

Current Hazardous Materials Transportation Research and Future Needs April 17, 2012 103 Attribute Attribute Values Attribute Weight (%) Cost (Optional) Project Budget $50K or less 100 0.15 $100K or less 90 $150K or less 80 $200K or less 70 $250K or less 60 $300K or less 50 $350K or less 40 $400K or less 30 $450K or less 20 $500K or less 10 More than $500K 0 The different values for each attribute in Table 6 (and the attribute weights) were selected by the project team based on subject matter expertise and input from the stakeholders interviewed for earlier tasks in this project. The team recommends a non-uniform distribution of values for each attribute (column 3 in the table) to represent the relative differences between them. As the weights are expressed in percentages, the maximum ‘score’ for a research need or problem is 100 if project budget is included (85 if not). Some of the attributes can be assigned values of zero and others have a defined non-zero minimum. In addition to the two approaches that do or do not include the project budget, a third alternative was considered that may appeal to some users: a benefit-cost ratio. As the benefits are unitless and the costs are not, the project team determined that dividing the estimated benefits by the logarithm of the project costs yielded the most reasonable results. As an example, consider a $250,000 research project that looks at evaluating different testing methods for types of tank steel to determine how best to apply the different methods to cargo tank, tank car, and possibly pipeline testing procedures. The scope includes requirements for testing intervals, determining specifications and limitations to which the tests are applicable, and specific procedures for conducting the tests, including temperature and other relevant factors. Based on the stakeholder interviews, recent and current research on testing methods has been quite common. Therefore, a value of 20 is assigned to the ‘Research Priority’ attribute to represent a ‘Low- priority need.’ Multiplying this rating value by the assigned weight of 25 percent results in an attribute score of 5. Plugging in sample values for the other attributes yields the following calculations for the three different approaches: