"Explores near-term (less than 5 years) and longer-term (5-10 years) technologies that are candidates for enhancing the safety and security of hazardous materials transportation for use by shippers, carriers, emergency responders, or government regulatory and enforcement agencies. The report examines emerging generic technologies that hold promise of being introduced during these near- and longer-term spans. It also highlights potential impediments (e.g., technical, economic, legal, and institutional) to, and opportunities for, their development, deployment, and maintenance. The research focused on all modes used to transport hazardous materials (trucking, rail, marine, air, and pipeline) and resulted in the identification of nine highly promising emerging technologies."--Provided by publisher.

"This report presents a user-friendly guidebook to support risk assessment, emergency response preparedness, resource allocation, and analyses of hazardous commodity flows across jurisdictions. The guidebook, which updates the U.S. Department of Transportation's "Guidance for Conducting Hazardous Materials Flow Surveys," is targeted at transportation planning operations staff at the local and regional levels, as well as local and regional personnel involved in hazardous materials training and emergency response. All modes of transportation, all classes and divisions of hazardous materials, and the effects of seasonality on hazardous materials movements are discussed."--publisher's description.

TRB’s Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program (HMCRP) Report 6: Feasibility of a Consolidated Security Credential for Persons Who Transport Hazardous Materials discusses the feasibility of consolidating several existing security credentials, which are necessary under current regulations and policies, into one credential for all transportation modes.

"TRB's Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program (HMCRP) Report 9: A Compendium of Best Practices and Lessons Learned for Improving Local Community Recovery from Disastrous Hazardous Materials Transportation Incidents explores how local communities can develop or improve recovery planning and operations in response to hazardous materials transportation incidents"--Publisher's description.

"TRB's Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program (HMCRP) Report 10: Feasibility Study for Highway Hazardous Materials Bulk Package Accident Performance Data Collection explores methods to collect and analyze performance data for U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)-specified hazardous materials bulk packages such as portable tanks and cargo tank motor vehicles. The report also identifies and evaluates institutional challenges to data collection, and makes suggestions for overcoming these challenges. In addition, the report offers a methodical approach for developing and implementing a reporting database system to collect and characterize information about damage to U.S. DOT-specified hazardous materials bulk packages involved in accidents, regardless of whether the damage resulted in a leak of contents. Appendices A through G have been published on a CD-ROM, which is bound into this report. Appendix titles are the following: Appendix A: Survey Development and Questions; Appendix B: Conditional Probability of Release as a Function of Data Refinement; Appendix C: Differences Between Highway and Rail Hazardous Material Transportation Affecting Development of a Bulk Package Accident Performance Database; Appendix D: Option Evaluation Tool; Appendix E: Pilot Study Data Collection Tool; Appendix F: Links to Newspaper Articles; Appendix G: An Example of Bulk Package Performance Analysis Using Multivariate Regression. The CD-ROM is also available for download from TRB's website as an ISO image. Links to the ISO image and instructions for burning a CD-ROM from an ISO image are provided below."--Pub. Info.

TRB's Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program (HMCRP) Report 1: Hazardous Materials Transportation Incident Data for Root Cause Analysis examines potential technical improvements to hazardous materials accident databases that are collected and managed by various agencies. The report explores gaps and redundancies in reporting requirements and attempts to estimate the extent of the under-reporting of serious incidents.

This report examines the challenges of advancing the use of electronic shipping papers as an alternative to the current paper-based hazardous materials communication system. Paper copy hazardous materials shipping papers have several drawbacks: they are labor intensive and subject to human error; they are perishable and may not be available to emergency responders in the event of an incident; and they are difficult to exchange between modes or different vehicles within a mode. The use of internationally compatible electronic data-sharing technologies could significantly improve the exchange of hazardous materials shipping information among shippers, carriers, regulatory agencies, and emergency responders. Timely access to accurate hazardous materials shipping information will likely reduce errors in information exchange, improve efficiency, enhance security, and improve the response efforts in the event of a hazardous materials incident.

"TRB's Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program (HMCRP) Report 7: Role of Human Factors in Preventing Cargo Tank Truck Rollovers analyzes the causes of the major driver factors contributing to cargo tank truck rollovers and offers safety, management, and communication practices that can be used to help potentially minimize or eliminate driver errors in cargo tank truck operations. The report focuses on three areas of practice--rollover-specific driver training and safety programs, the use of behavior management techniques, and the use of fitness-for-duty management practices--that could have long-lasting benefits for motor carriers of all sizes across the tank truck industry."--Publisher's description.

"This Guide presents comprehensive, step-by-step guidance on assessing hazardous materials emergency response needs at state, regional, and local levels; matching state, regional, and local capabilities with potential emergencies involving different types of hazardous materials; and assessing how quickly resources can be brought to bear in an emergency. The methodology described in the Guide is designed to be scalable, allowing the implementation results to be aggregated at the local level up through regional, state, and national levels. Also, the Guide is designed to connect as many components as possible to already-established standards, guidelines, regulations, and laws, so that the Guide will remain current as these underlying components are updated. In addition, the Guide discusses appropriate means for maintaining currency of the information over time. The Guide and accompanying spreadsheet tool (on the attached CD-ROM), which leads planners through the assessment process, will be most useful for local jurisdictions that have limited resources and expertise in hazardous materials emergency response planning."--Publisher's description.