Logistics has become a strategic factor for development and competition. Terrorist attacks, such as 11th of September 2001 in the USA, have caused the introduction of rules and procedures, which affect the overall logistics showing the vulnerability of the global economy. This book presents the status of research on dangerous goods transport.

This book addresses the various risks associated with the transport of dangerous goods within a territory. The emphasis of the contributions is on methods and tools to reduce the vulnerability of both the environment and human society to accidents or malicious acts involving such transport. With topics ranging from game theory to governance principles, the authors together cover technical, legal, financial, and logistic aspects of this problem. The intended audience includes responsible persons in territorial organizations, managers of transport infrastructures, as well as students, teachers and researchers wishing to deepen their knowledge in this area.

Not until the recent attacks on transport systems has transport security become a focus of public concern and academic research. Various aspects of transport security have already been analysed under different agendas. Some research was focused on the potential risk to the environment resulting from transport, in particular from the transport of hazardous or dangerous goods, while other research considered critical elements of transport networks or supply chains as vital lifelines in the case of natural disasters. Recently, new threats stimulated interest in transport security as a stand-alone issue, placing it at the forefront of political and academic agendas. A NATO Advanced Research Workshop held at Imperial College London in January 2009 brought together those with expertise in the above-mentioned fields in order to verify the current state of knowledge in the field and identify promising areas for future work. The workshop concentrated on maritime and intermodal transport, risk management and long-term strategic planning, rather than on the details of monitoring or detection techniques. This collection of papers emanates largely from that workshop. While transport systems are widely recognized as terrorist targets, complete protection of these systems is economically and practically infeasible. The workshop looked at analytical methods to identify critical points in the transport infrastructure and the prioritization of defensive and mitigating measures given the limited resources available. Deficiencies in methods for conducting such an assessment were identified and the need for cost-effective mitigation measures was emphasized.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Network Optimization, INOC 2011, held in Hamburg, Germany, in June 2011. The 65 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers highlight recent developments in network optimization and are organized in the following topical sections: theoretical problems, uncertainty, graph theory and network design; network flows; routing and transportation; and further optimization problems and applications (energy oriented network design, telecom applications, location, maritime shipping, and graph theory).

Written in a clear language, for use by scholars, managers and decisionmakers, this practical guide to the hot topic is unique in treating the security aspects of hazmat transportation from both uni-modal and multi-modal perspectives. To begin with, each transport mode and its relation to security vulnerability, analyses, figures, and approaches is discussed separately. Secondly, the optimization process of a hazmat supply chain is examined from a holistic, integrated viewpoint. Finally, the book discusses and compares the various hazmat transport security policies and strategies adopted in various regions around the world. The result is a must-have source of high-quality information including many case studies.