Hazmat-Compliant Fuel Routing

Product Used: Route Optimization API

Background

Consider an energy logistics company operating a fleet of tanker trucks transporting multiple hazardous petroleum products across a metropolitan region. On a typical day, the fleet may transport materials including crude oil destined for a refinery, gasoline and diesel for retail gas stations, kerosene or aviation fuel for industrial or aviation facilities. Each shipment belongs to a particular hazmat classification, and vehicles must be routed appropriately while transporting these materials. Without incorporating hazmat classifications into routing decisions, companies risk non-compliance with safety requirements or regulatory standards.

Problem Statements

When dealing with fuels which fall under different UN designated classes of hazardous material, the dispatchers face problems with:

Routing hazardous fuels

Transporting hazardous fuels requires routing systems to consider the hazard classification of the cargo being transported to avoid regulatory compliance risks. For example, trucks transporting flammable liquids such as gasoline or crude oil may be restricted from certain routes and avoid tunnels, or densely populated areas depending on local regulations.

Efficient route plans for fleet

Effective route planning for a fleet of fuel tanker trucks requires a careful balance: meeting all delivery commitments while proactively avoiding heavy traffic and ensuring full compliance with regulations governing the transport of hazardous materials.

Solution

A route optimization API that supports the hazmat_type input parameter allows users to explicitly specify the hazardous material classification associated with the cargo being transported.

Hazard-aware routing decisions

When the hazmat_type parameter is provided, the routing engine incorporates the hazardous classification of the fuel into its route optimization logic to generate routes that remain aligned with hazardous material transportation standards, while still producing efficient delivery routes for the fleet.

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  "options": {
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       "routing": {
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           "hazmat_type": [
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               "flammable_liquid"
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           ],
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           "mode": "truck"
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       }
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   }

Sample Request and Response

Following is a JSON request that we built for this case and the corresponding response.

API Request

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curl --location 'https://api.nextbillion.io/optimization/v2?key=<your_api_key>' --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{...}'

API Response

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{
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  "description": "Hazmat Compliant Routing",
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  "result": '{...}',
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  "status": "Ok",
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  "message": ""

We observed how the optimizer chooses routes which are operationally safe and efficient routes to ensure regulatory compliance. It dynamically evaluated the potential real-time traffic congestions on the route of each vehicle to identify and select the most suitable routes for the given scenario.