Author(s)

H. Hejny

Abstract

The European economy relies heavily upon a sustainable transportation system. In this transportation system, tunnels are a key element. The safety systems in a significant part of the existing tunnels were designed on the basis of traffic and its estimated growth of two or more decades ago. It appears however that traffic has grown more significantly and also changed in composition (more combustible and flammable goods). Consequently the safety level in existing tunnels has decreased in cases where no intermediate measures were taken to cope with the changed supply of rolling stock. This holds throughout Europe, for road-, rail- and mass-transit tunnels. The UPTUN project main objects are therefore: • Development of innovative technologies where appropriate and where relevant comparing to and the assessment of existing technologies for tunnel application. Focus is on technologies in the areas of detection and monitoring, mitigating measures, influencing human response, and protection against structural damage. The main output is a set of innovative cost-effective technologies. • Development, demonstration and promotion of procedures for rational safety level evaluation, including decision support models; and knowledge transfer. The main output is a risk based evaluating and upgrading model. The desired spin-off of the UPTUN project would be: • the restoration of faith in tunnels as safe parts of the transportation systems; • the levelling out of trade barriers imposed by supposedly unsafe tunnels; • an increased awareness of stakeholders for the necessity to develop initiatives to link all relevant research. As the project is running until August 2006 this paper will give an overview of the project and the achievements obtained so far. Keywords: tunnel safety, fire safety, innovative technologies, tunnel upgrading model.

Keywords

tunnel safety, fire safety, innovative technologies, tunnel upgrading model.