Department of Environmental Sanitation & Toxic Substance Management of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications amended the “Toxic Chemical Substances Transportation Management Regulations” this year. The regulations enforced vehicles carrying Class 1, Class 2 and Class 3 toxic chemical substances to equip real-time tracking systems or Global Positioning System (GPS). To lessen the impact on transporters, the EPA divided the enforcement into 4 stages. At the first stage, tank lorries were required to equip with GPS started on 1-Aug, 2008. Since then, the toxic chemical substance transportation management entered into a new era of e-manifest system integrated with real-time tracking system. Toxic Chemical Substances were valuable product, the purpose of monitoring system was accident prevention, fast notification, and quick response to accident. Before the enforcement, t he project team held 3 conventions of the enforcement process, more than 300 people attended the conventions. After enforcement, .4 training courses were held, and 40 transportation companies and 32 management agencies attended the courses. Because of the enforcement for the first time, major tasks of this project including assist transportation companies to understand and comply with the regulations and procedures, and transmit GPS tracks to the EPA. As a large portion of vehicles had already equipped with GPS for fleet management before the regulation announcement, the EPA established a standard database format for software integration to prevent transporters from unnecessary investment. At present, there are approximately 650 vehicles with 90 transportation companies equipped with GPS provided by 10 GPS suppliers. Establishing an information infrastructure was another major task this year. The monitor system established by this project provided services to users included transportation companies, environmental protection and communication management agencies. The project team also developed a real-time track inquiry for real-time monitoring, and a historical track inquiry for behavior analysis, as well as strengthened monitoring on suspicious vehicles , and added theme GIS monitoring function to meet different management agencies requirement. The regulation of second stage was drafted this year and published on GPS website for collecting suggestions for future amendment.

Toxic Chemical Substances Transportation Management, Real-time Tracking Systems, Fleet Monitoring