Overview
Dangerous Good Transport (DGT) represents a risk for people, property and environment in the neighbourhood of Dangerous Good (DG) flows. There is a lack of environmental regulation to save human life and to protect the environment. Of course it must be recognised that the modal regulations represent good safety legislation, but they can't regulate territorial risks: for modal legislation there is no difference between a truck crossing a high population density city or a desert.
DaGoT's general aim was to focus on the state of the art of Dangerous Good Transport on DGT: verifying the validity of existent methodologies and technologies, evaluating future research needs with special reference to sustainable development and risk management.
DaGoT's objective was to stimulate EU co-operation on sustainable development and safety in DGT, by exchanging and integrating experience among public local authorities, transport companies, infrastructure owners, stakeholders, decision makers, researchers, providers of technology and training institutions.
The frame of this project has been designed as a succession of analysis, check and study in depth moments, with subsequent possible re-modulation of the material and of the analytical techniques.
The fundamental methodology of the work was defined as to share knowledge, data, criteria and best practices, using a 'geographical method' centred on a particular area, the two ten-corridor crossing Genoa and Liguria.
The activities carried out were: studies integration, analysis, benchmarking mapping and dissemination to produce a clearer definition of DGT flows and related management throughout EU. The project was structured into eight work packages (WP), as follows:
- WP1 - Preparation of dissemination elements and discussing documents for working groups;
- WP2 - Researching and choosing target operators/players to set up working groups;
- WP3 - Analysing European area and implementing Workshop;
- WP4 - Evaluating European data. Revising and increasing dissemination elements;
- WP5 - Setting up draft report on the activities (White Paper’s rough version);
- WP6 - Final Conference and results evaluation;
- WP7 - White Paper Final Version; and
- WP8 - Results dissemination.
Funding
Results
Starting the project the team was concerned with the need for similar and compatible technologies in monitoring and about the needing of territorial regulations for DGT. A strong DaGoT interest was also risk analysis study and the consequent possibility to have well founded Decision Support System embedded into the technological platform devoted to monitoring of DG Transportation.
At the end from the technological point of view, the team was less concerned with technology itself, (a lot of useful technologies were found) and much more concerned with a practical application to define useful flow data for every traffic segment. In fact no rational planning and no practical regulation for mitigating risks could be possible without a good knowledge of this data. At the same time a strong Regional role emerged, also from governance point of view. Regions were the place where activities could look after the local problems without forgetting the international scenario. For instance different Regions working on the same project could produce a flexible model of accounting flows and valuable models for data exchange. The consultants established that having put a strong attention on Regional Institutions, as leading participants to DGT projects, also in technological projects; it was a real contribution to the state of the art.
From the risk analysis point of view the team realised that models were growing but also that it was possible to have a pragmatic approach to risk management, for instance French cities. This pragmatic approach was able to provide strong support to policy making and planning. So whilst waiting for a more complete theory for risk analysis of DGT it is useful to be able to use the pragmatic model for decision making.
Following French cities example for risk management it is good but studying this case, the needs for use GIS and data base at centralised level to record the forbidden or the free roads for DGT paths is required.