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