Day 42: July 31, 2013

Today was the last day working in B118. I spent the entire day organizing files and working on the M Project. I stayed until 9 pm working on it because there was still a lot to do. 

I must say that I have had an amazing experience here as part of RailTEC. I have really enjoyed working and learning from all the graduates students. I hope I can soon be a part of all of this, maybe as a graduate student myself.

Thank you so much to everyone that helped me. Especially to Xiang, Jesus, Chen-yu and Rapik and to the rest of undergrads: Jeff, Hanna and Eli. It has been a pleasure working with all of you.

Keep up with the hard work! and have a great summer.

Hasta pronto amigos!

P.S. I will continue working from Spain for the next couple of days until the M project is done.

Day 41: July 30, 2013

Today I spent most of the day working on the Canadian accident module. By the end of the day I had finished it and I started to work on the M project as Xiang asked me to help them. I think tomorrow I will continue with this task as there is still a lot to do. 

Today:

-Work on the Canadian accident module                                              (finished)

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder                              (to be finished)

-Work on the M project automatization tool                                        (to be finished)

*-Work on the M project                                                                    (to be finished)

Next day:

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder

-Start to work on the M project automatization tool

-Work on the M project

Day 40: July 29, 2013

Today I started the day working on the Canadian accident module. I spent most of the morning reading articles about it and working on the ppt. The module is almost done. I only have to include a couple of slides to give an overview about the repercusions of the accident and the new regulations/recommendations that the different canadian administrations have approved. I plan on finishing this module tomorrow. 

On the afternoon I finished organizing all the M project ArcMap files and I started to read about AutoIt script, a programming tool that I may be able to use to automatize the calculations in excel of the the M project. Tomorrow, I will further look into the feasibility of using this tool.

Today:

-Work on the Canadian accident module                                              (to be finished)

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder                              (to be finished)

*-Start to work on the M project automatization tool                            (to be finished)

Next day:

-Work on the Canadian accident module

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder

-Start to work on the M project automatization tool

Day 39: July 26, 2013

I spent most of the day reviewing my ppt modules. Among other improvements, I included all the comments that I received in the presentation on Thursday. 

On the afternoon I organized all my files on the server, making sure that everything can be easily find and accessed. On Monday I will continue with this task as especially the ArcMap files are requiring more time that I had expected. 

Today:

-Work on the Canadian accident module                                               (to be finished)

-Review my presentation considering the different comments                  (done)

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder                               (to be finished)

Next day:

-Work on the Canadian accident module

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder

Day 38: July 25, 2013

I began the morning working with the rest of the interns on the review of the safety meeting presentations. At 11:00 am we had the meeting. It was a very interesting meeting as we began discussing the spanish high speed accident that had just happened. After that, Hannah, Eli and I gave our presentations. We obtained plenty of helpful and constructive feedback and comments to improve our work. On the overall I was happy with the presentation. 

On the afternoon I started to organize all the files. I want to make sure that every file has a proper name and that my work is accesible to anyone in the future. I will work with the other interns to have the "Summer Team" folder well organized.

I stoped this work to help Xiaonan with the M project as it needed to be delivered by Friday. I spent most of the night working on the ArcMap part of the project, developing the necessary maps. 

Today:

-Work on the Canadian accident module                                        (no time)          

-Review the presentation with the other interns                             (done)

-Attend the Safety Group meeting                                                (done)

-Present my analysis on the Safety Group meeting                           (done)

-Work on the M project                                                              (done)

Next day:

-Work on the Canadian accident module

-Review my presentation considering the different comments

-Organazise the files and the "Summer team" folder

Day 37: July 24, 2013

I spent the day preparing the presentation for the safety group meeting. Although I wanted to include some slides to justify and explain all the assumptions and hypothesis of my analysis I could not do so,  in order to keep the presentation under 25 slides. Later I met with Chen-Yu that had reviewed my 4th module: "Case study" and that had some very helpful comments. I have to say that he has been a great help! 

On the afternoon the rest of the interns and I reviewed our presentations for tomorrow. It was helpful because we all provide suggestions to each other's presentations.

Today:

-Work on the Canadian accident module                             (to be finished)

-Prepare the presentation for the safety group meeting        (done)

-Review the presentation with the other interns                   (to be finished)

Next day:

-Work on the Canadian accident module

-Review the presentation with the other interns

-Attend the Safety Group meeting

-Present my analysis on the Safety Group meeting

Day 36: July 23, 2013

Today I spent most of the day reading news articles from different sources about the Lac-Mégantic accident. I found that a good source of information is wikipedia. It is hard to find detailed information because most of the search results are always articles with repeated, old or inaccurate information. I found a good source of pictures here. FIG14 shows an aerial view of Lac-Mégantic's downtown area after the derailment. 

I think that it is essential to learn from this event as much as possible to guarantee that such accidents don´t happen again. I plan on finishing this module tomorrow.

FIG14: Aerial view of Lac-Mégantic's downtown are after the accident.

Today:

-Start the Canadian accident module                                                    (to be finished)

-Attend the RailTEC weekly lunch meeting (Brent Williams' presentation)     (done)

Next day:

-Work on the Canadian accident module

-Prepare the presentation for the safety group meeting

-Review the presentation with the other interns

Day 35: July 22, 2013

I worked on the case study for most of the day. I started the morning by finishing some of the route maps taht I wanted to include in the presentation. Moreover, I went back to the project powerpoint that we worked at the begining of June to find some graphs that would allow me to better communicate the results obtained in my case study. I spent most part of the afternoon developing these graphs. FIG13 which is one of the mentioned graphs, represents the distribution of risk by segment along the Epping to Port Arthur BNSF route. At the end of the day I finished the case study presentation. This file along all the other presentations that I ahve developed so far con be found in this link. Tomorrow I will work on the Canadian accident module and I hope I can have some slides ready for the final presentation on Thrusday. 

FIG13: Epping to Port Arthur: Distribution of risk by segment.

Today:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"              (done)                           

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the necessary maps for the presentation      (done)

-Work on the Canadian accident module                                              (no time)

Next day:

-Start the Canadian accident module

-Attend the RailTEC weekly lunch meeting

This link contains the folder with the modules that I have developed so far.

Day 34: July 19, 2013

Today I spent the entire day working on the case study. I had to reedit some of the maps so that the formatting was consistent. I also reviewed the part that I had completed so far to take into account the recommendations that were given to Jeff in yesterday's meeting. This has taken me longer than I expected but I think I will finish this module on Monday.

Today:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                  (to be finished)

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the necessary maps for the presentation          (to be finished)

-Work on the Canadian accident module                                                   (no time)

Next day:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                                        

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the necessary maps for the presentation

-Work on the Canadian accident module

Day 33: July 18, 2013

I started the morning attending (via conference call) the Safety group meeting. Although I had seen Jeff's presentation before, I thought the discussion that his risk model generated was very interesting. 

I worked on the crude oil FRA-PHMSA database for most of the day. I managed to find the FRA reports for each of the crude oil release accidents (7 accidents -crash or derailment- from 2003-2013) recorded in PHMSA database. Since there are only 7 events I dont think behaviour trends can be extrapolated from this database. However, as there is currently a boom in the transportation of crude oil by rail, I think this database will be very helpfull in the future. It can be the starting point to keep track of all the crude oil-related incidents. Once that I finished this, I worked on ArcMap for the rest of the night. Tomorrow I plan on finishing both the work with ArcMap and presentation 4.

Today:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                 (to be finished)

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the necessary maps for the presentation          (to be finished)

-Work on the Crude Oil FRA-PHMSA database                                            (done)

-Attend the Safety group meeting (Jeff's presentation)                               (done)

Next day:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                                        

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the necessary maps for the presentation

-Work on the Canadian accident module

Day 32: July 17, 2013

I spent the entire morning working on the crude oil FRA-PHMSA database. I found that in total there have been 9 accidents (crash or derailment) of train that were transporting crude oil since 1990. This number is much larger (269) if we consider all the incident releases (not only accidents). I made some graphs and charts that show some basic characteristics of this incidents. FIG12, one of the most interesting figures that I obtained, shows the number of crude oil release incidents reported to PHMSA per year (2003-2013). 

On the afternoon I met with Chen-Yu and we reviewed my first three modules. He made some very significant suggestions and formatting comments. I spent the rest of the day working on these. Between tomorrow and friday I plan on finishing the preliminary database (if I have time I plan to supplement it with the NTSB reports) and the 4th presentation.

FIG12: Number of crude oil release incidents per year.
*the value for 2013 is an estimation 

Today:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                       (no time)                

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the necessary maps for the presentation               (to be finished)

-Work on the Crude Oil FRA-PHMSA database                                                 (to be finished)

Next day:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                                        

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the necessary maps for the presentation

-Work on the Crude Oil FRA-PHMSA database

-Attend the Safety group meeting

Day 31: July 16, 2013

Today I started the day working on the 4th presentation: "Case study introduction, justification". After doing the first couple of slides, I had to go back to ArcMap to obtain the maps that I wanted to show in the presentation. FIG11 shows one of this maps, where the FRA Track Class distribution is shown for the studied route.

On the afternoon I began to work on the FRA-PHMSA crude oil release incident database. I downloaded the FRA accident database for the period 2003-2012. I obtained that in total, there have been 290 accidents involving cars that contained any kind of hazardous material. Tomorrow I plan on keep working on this database eliminating all the data that is not related to the transportation of crude oil. 

FIG11: FRA Track Class distribution

Today:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                    (to be finished)

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the necessary maps for the presentation            (to be finished)

-Work on the Crude Oil FRA-PHMSA database                                              (to be finished)

-Attend the RailTEC weekly lunch meeting (Matt's presentation)                     (done)

Next day:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                                        

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the necessary maps for the presentation

-Work on the Crude Oil FRA-PHMSA database

Day 30: July 15, 2013

I spent most of the day working on the excel spread sheet. I finished the calculations for the shortest route between the origin (Epping) and destination (Port Arthur). I will include the analysis of this route in the last module: "Risk Mitigation Measures".

On the afternoon, Xiang and I had a small talk. He recommended me to make a complete database of the reported crude oil release incidents. He suggested to  add the information that I obtained from PHMSA with the one provide in the FRA database. He also pointed out that as crude oil transportation by train has boomed, the development of this database will be very helpfull in the near future. 

This database will be very helpfull for my case study as well. Right now I am assuming the worst case scenario, that is the accident occurs at night and the released crude oil sets on fire. According to DOT Emergency Response Guidebook, this situation requires the evacuation of people within 0.5 miles from the location of the accident. However, in general this approach overestimates the risk as many cases don't fall in this category. Once that I develop the crude oil release incidents database, I plan on obtaining some basic statistics that would allow me to know for example how many accidents have occurred during the day and how many at night.

Today:

-Work on the presentation 3: "Risk escenario and quantitative risk model."        (done)

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                     (to be finsihed)           

-Finish Work on the excel calculations of the risk analysis                                (done)

Next day:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                                        

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the necessary maps for the presentation

-Work on the Crude Oil FRA-PHMSA database

-Attend the RailTEC weekly lunch meeting

Day 29: July 12, 2013

I spent most of the day working on the excel spread sheet. I finished all the necessary calculations for the practical route. After talking with Jeff, we both decided that we were going to quantify the risk in terms of people affected per barrel transported. This unit of measure clearly describes the risk associated with the transportation of crude oil. In addition, it allows us to compare the two different modes of transportation and it can be very helpfull for a company when deciding which transportation mode is more adecuate.

On the afternoon we met with Xiang and we went over one of Jeff's presentation. Aside from explaining us the basic formatting of the powerpoint, Xiang and Jesus gave us many useful comments that we could all apply to our ppt.

On Monday I plan on finishing the spread sheet with the calculations for the shortest route and I will work on the presentation 3: "Risk escenario and quantitative risk model."

Today:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                          (no time)

-Work on the excel calculations of the risk analysis                                             (to be finished)

-Meeting with Xiang to go over the basic structure and formatting of the ppt         (done)              

Next day:

-Work on the presentation 3: "Risk escenario and quantitative risk model."

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                                        

-Finish Work on the excel calculations of the risk analysis

Day 28: July 11, 2013

I began my working day attending the Safety Group presentation. As usual, each of us briefly talked about the work that we have been doing for the past week and then Laura gave a presentation regarding his research. That is the analysis of the conditional probability of release in a derailment. I think his presentation was very interesting especially because, among other factors, it takes into account derailment speed and the possible iteraction between tank cars when a derailment occurs. Acording to her results although the velocity of the first car is the highest, it can not interact with any other car (this is one of the assumptions). Therefore, the highest CPR is found in the 8th car since its velocity is still significant and it also has the possibility to collide (and therefore release its material) with one of the first 7 cars.

After the meeting I continued to work on my excel spread sheet. I used the spread sheet that we developed the first couple of weeks as a starting point but I had to make some changes. I want to quantify the risk associated with the transportation of crude oil in two different routes. The practial route (the one that the software PC*miller provides) and the shortest route. I think it will be interesting to see the results as the practical route goes through several important cities such as Kansas and Houston. FIG10 shows the alignment of these two routes. In addition, I will compare the risk using a 111A100W1 tank car (the most frequently used) and a 112J340W tank car (very rarely used but it has a lower CPR).

Between tomorrow and Monday I plan on finishing this calculations and as soon as I do I will go back to work on the third presentation. 

FIG10: Alignment of the practical and the shortest route 

Today:

-Start presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"           (to be finished)       

-Atthend the Safety group meeting (Laura's presentation)               (done)                         

Next day:

-Work on presentation 4: "Case study introduction, justification"                                        

-Work on the excel calculations of the risk analysis

-Meeting with Xiang to go over the basic structure and formatting of the ppt

This link contains the folder with the modules that I have developed so far.

Day 27: July 10, 2013

I spent most of the morning working on the analysis of the PHMSA Hazardous Materials release incident database. The location of some of the accidents as well as a couple other values were not recorded properly so I had to fixed them. This was a very tedious process. However, once I was done, I managed to located geographically each accident in ArcMap. FIG9 shows the location of every U.S. crude oil transported by rail release incident from 1971 to May 2013. This figure will be included in my second ppt.

On the afternoon I worked on the second presentation. I added some new slides that give a brief overview about the different crude oil release incidents that have occured in the past 40 years. Tomorrow I will start working in the new module.

FIG9: Location of the U.S. crude oil transported by rail release incidents 1971-2013

Today:

-Fisnish presentation 2: Rail Hazardous Materials Transportation                               (done)

-Start presentation 4: Case study introduction, justification                                     (No time)

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk          (to be finished)

-Work with the PHMSA Hazardous Materials incident database                                   (done)

Next day:

-Start presentation 4: Case study introduction, justification                               

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk

-Atthend the Safety group meeting (Laura's presentation)

Day 26: July 9, 2013

Today I kept working on the second presentation. Following a previous recommendation of Xiang, I decided to add a couple of slides to provide the reader with a basic understanding of the consequences of crude oil rail transportation accidents. To do so I will list the most important accidents and I will very briefly review two of them. I have been reading about the recent Canadian accident in order to include this as one of the examples. I am aware of the fact that this accident has not occur in U.S, however, as it is one of the worst disasters regarding crude oil rail transportation its review will be worth it.

In addition, I downloaded the PHMSA crude oil rail accident database. I spent the entire afternoon working on it. I have about 300 incidents,some of them are duplicates as each tank car is reported individually. I am working on erasing these duplicates and also on locating those accidents in GIS. I plan on finishing this analysis tomorrow. I think it would be very interesting to see where these accidents have occured and if this location has any relationship with the associated cost of the accident.

Today:

-Fisnish presentation 2: Rail Hazardous Materials Transportation                              (to be finished)

-Start presentation 4: Case study introduction, justification                                    (no time)

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk        (to be finished)

-Attend the RailTEC weekly lunch meeting (Brandon's Presentation)                          (done)

*-Work with the PHMSA Hazardous Materials incident database                                (to be finished)

Next day:

-Fisnish presentation 2: Rail Hazardous Materials Transportation

-Start presentation 4: Case study introduction, justification                               

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk

-Work with the PHMSA Hazardous Materials incident database

Day 25: July 8, 2013

I started the morning working on the second presentation that gives an overview of Rail Hazardous Materials Transportation. The presentation is almost finished. In addition, I spent sometime helping Jesus to analyse an accident consequence database that he requires to obtain more precised results for his report.

At the end of the day, we all (the interns) presented our introduction powerpoints and provide each others with some helpful comments. Tomorrow I plan on finishing the second presentation.   

Today:

-Work on presentation 2: Rail Hazardous Materials Transportation                        (to be finished)

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk    (to be finished)

*-Partial analysis of an accident consequence database to help Jesus                     (done)

Next day:

-Fisnish presentation 2: Rail Hazardous Materials Transportation

-Start presentation 4: Case study introduction, justification                               

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk

-Attend the RailTEC weekly lunch meeting 

Day 24: July 5, 2013

As the previous day, I spent most of my day working on GIS. I finish the ArcMap analysis and I now have the population density for each segment of my route. I started the excel part of the analysis but I want to move on with the presentations so next week I'm planing to work mainly on the ppts. 

On the afternoon, I kept working on the GIS automatization tool. I finish it by the end of the day and it will only require some testing to make sure that it works properly. If I have time by the end of the program I will try to automatize also the excel calculations of the risk analysis but my priority right now is to finish both my case study and the ppt modules. 

Today:

-Work on presentation 2: Rail Hazardous Material Transportation                        (to be finished)

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the population density along the route                    (done)

-Develop a tool to automatize the GIS process                                                  (done)

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk    (to be finished)

Next day:

-Work on presentation 2: Rail Hazardous Material Transportation                                

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk

Day 23: July 3, 2013

Today I spent most of the day working on ArcMap. First I started working on the analysis of the selected route, which is almost finished. Then I spent the rest of the day working on the automatization tool. I'm developing this tool using the application model builder which comes with ArcMap. My idea is that this tool will take as an input the .shp file that contains the route that wants to be analyzed and a buffer distance to take into account that different buffer distances maybe required depending on the hazardous material analyzed. The tool will automatically go through all the necessary steps (join tables, intersect layers, buffers...) and it will give the user a table with the population density for each segment of the route. A preliminary scheme of this tool is shown in FIG8.

Tomorrow I plan on working in finishing the tool and also the GIS analysis of my route.

FIG8: Scheme of the automatization model for the calculation of the population density along a route

Today:

-Work on presentation 2: Rail Hazardous Material Transportation                    (to be finished)

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the population density along the route                (to be finished)

-Develop a tool to automatize the GIS process                                              (to be finished)

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk

Next day:

-Work on presentation 2: Rail Hazardous Material Transportation                 

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the population density along the route            

-Develop a tool to automatize the GIS process                                                   

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk

Day 22: July 2, 2013

I started the morning doing some traffic data analysis for Xiang. The aim of this short analysis was to make sure that the results obtained in the previous study were correct. After that, I kept working on the first module of the educational presentation. I finished the first part of the first powerpoint that gives an introduction to Rail Transportation. I started the second part which describes the basics of the transportation of hazardous material by rail.

Then I attended the RailTEC weekly meeting where Jesus presented an extended and improved version of his presentation on Thursday. After that we had a discussion with Xiang addressing some comments that were brought up on the meeting: We discussed the precision of the risk model that we are using and if with the utilization of the buffer we were miscounting people. 

I worked on GIS for the rest of the day. The ArcMap process is taking me longer because along the way I'm creating a tool that will automate the entire analysis. This tool will be very useful in the future if other risk anayalisis based on population affected were to be undertaken.

Today:

-Work on the "udemy" ppt (module 1 introduction)                                                 (to be finished)

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the population density along the route                         (to be finished

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk        (to be finished)

-Attend the RailTEC weekly meeting (Jesus' Presentation)                                       (done)

Next day:
-Work on the "udemy" ppt (module 1 introduction)

-Work with ArcMap to obtain the population density along the route

-Literature review on the evaluation and analsyis of crude oil transportation risk