Assessing hazardous waste transport risks using a GIS

The transport phase is an often neglected element in the risk assessment of non-nuclear hazardous waste life cycles. Data on special and hazardous waste movements are difficult to acquire, but information collected by the London Waste Regulation Authority during the 1980s gives details of waste consignments from cradle to grave, including U.K. grid references for waste producer and disposal sites. A GIS was used to model the routing of aqueous waste cargoes and assess the potential impacts of such movements. Deficiencies in the consignment records required many assumptions to be made and various scenarios were explored. Roads predicted to see passage of these wastes, together with the estimated levels of tanker traffic, were integrated with the distribution of population, groundwater vulnerability and accident probabilities to evaluate the transportation risks for different localities. Comparisons and evaluations of the implications of different routing scenarios across the study region were made.