Causation Analysis of Hazardous Material Road Transportation Accidents by Bayesian Network Using Genie

Abstract EN

With the increase of hazardous materials (Hazmat) demand and transportation, frequent Hazmat road transportation accidents had arisen the widespread concern in the community.

Thus, it is necessary to analyze the risk factors’ implications, which would make the safety of Hazmat transportation evolve from “passive type” to “active type”.

In order to explore the influence of risk factors resulting in accidents and predict the occurrence of accidents under the combination of risk factors, 839 accidents that have occurred for the period 2015–2016 were collected and examined.

The Bayesian network structure was established by experts’ knowledge using Dempster-Shafer evidence theory.

Parameter learning was conducted by the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm in Genie 2.0.

The two main results could be likely to obtain the following.

(1) The Bayesian network model can explore the most probable factor or combination leading to the accident, which calculated the posterior probability of each risk factor.

For example, the importance of three or more vehicles in an accident leading to the severe accident is higher than less vehicles, and in the absence of other evidences, the most probable reasons for “explosion accident” are vehicles carrying flammable liquids, larger quantity Hazmat, vehicle failure, and transporting in autumn.

(2) The model can predict the occurrence of accident by setting the influence degrees of specific factor.

Such that the probability of rear-end accidents caused by “speeding” is 0.42, and the probability could reach up to 0.97 when the driver is speeding at the low-class roads.

Moreover, the complex logical relationship in Hazmat road transportation accidents could be obtained, and the uncertain relation among various risk factors could be expressed.

These findings could provide theoretical support for transportation corporations and government department on taking effective measures to reduce the risk of Hazmat road transportation.