Author(s)

FABIO BORGHETTI, ALESSIO FRASSOLDATI, MARCO DERUDI, IGINO LAI, CRISTIAN TRINCHINI

Abstract

In Italy, mainly due to its complex orography, there are more than 50% of road tunnels longer than 500 m belonging to the Trans European Road Network. Moreover, many road tunnels were designed and built several years ago, where both traffic flows and vehicle sizes were different. Generally speaking, it is possible to state that if on one hand road tunnels allow the improvement of the planoaltimetric coordination of road layouts, on the other hand they can represent a safety problem for users and for the infrastructure in case of a major event. With this in mind, it is interesting to study the resilience of a road tunnel following an event: how can the resilience of a tunnel be increased by considering emergency management? How can negative consequences be reduced by adopting specific safety measures, such as emergency teams? Starting from these two questions, the main goal of this work was to analyze two fire events that occurred in two tunnels located on the A24 highway in Italy between 2019 and 2021 and managed by Strada dei Parchi S.p.A. Both fires involved a light vehicle and there were no injuries or fatalities. For each of the two events, the response time of the emergency teams and the resolution time of the event were analyzed. In the first case it is possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the emergency teams in controlling and/or extinguishing a fire, while in the second case the impact on road traffic caused by the tunnel closure is analyzed. These analyses can be used for two important purposes: (i) risk assessment of a tunnel considering the emergency team as a safety measure; and (ii) implementation of traffic management plans to define the best strategy to be adopted according to the estimated time of closure of a tunnel.

Keywords

road tunnel, tunnel safety, emergency management, traffic management, transport resilience, tunnel resilience, tunnel operations, emergency teams effectiveness, tunnel fire, tunnel accident