The spate of fires in tunnels in Europe over the past decade resulting in serious loss of life and significant structural damage have highlighted the inadequacy of the design, management and guidelines for fire safety in road and rail/metro tunnels and the important role played by human behaviour. A survey conducted by European automobile associations pointed to poor fire safety provision in many road tunnels. Although a useful exercise, the methodology employed in these surveys has been criticised by experts as being inadequate, in that the tunnels were not evaluated in a holistic manner following a dynamic critical path method, but rather by the simple non-interactive summation of the safety levels of their individual components.
Consequently, the European Commission has embarked upon a major review of tunnel safety, with a view to upgrading existing tunnels and improving the guidelines for the design and operation of all European tunnels. Given that this is an immediate problem, the EU is ensuring that minimum safety standards are met in the short-term as part of the European Directive on road tunnel safety, leading towards harmonised pan-European guidelines. The funded multinational projects (part of the 5th Framework – Figure 1), follow a logical progression from the collection of data and the formation of a database on Fire In Tunnels (FIT project), to a major research and development project to UPgrade existing TUnnels (‘UPTUN’ project). Emphasis is placed upon innovative solutions and holistic interactive evaluations of fire safety levels, and finally towards the drafting of pan-European guidelines for Safety in Tunnels (‘SafeT’ project). Sustainability can be ensured if an application of a long-lasting and ultimately self-financing, Network of Excellence (‘SafeGuard’), just submitted to the EU as part of the 6th Framework, is approved. This process will undoubtedly lead to significantly improved fire safety standards in both existing and new tunnels.
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Recent major tunnel fires
A series of at least 10 major fires in road and rail tunnels have occurred in Europe over the past decade, causing serious loss of life and significant structural damage. It was in particular the human casualties in Mont Blanc, Tauern, Kaprun and Gotthard tunnel fires (221 lives lost in four fires over a period of just two years) that have provided the impetus for a major re-appraisal of fire safety in European tunnels. Added to this human tragedy, is the damage to the tunnel structures and installations. The Great Belt (during construction) and Channel Tunnel (soon after commissioning) fires, while resulting in no loss of life, have nevertheless caused major structural damage and financial loss, thus providing the impetus in both Denmark and the UK to take tunnel structural fire protection more seriously.
The socio-economic impacts on the wider regional economy also need to be taken into account (e.g. Italy and France from the closure of the Mont Blanc tunnel), which should be better appreciated and quantified in the future as part of an overall tunnel fire safety evaluation. The financial cost alone (excluding socio-economic impact) from direct damage and lost revenue of the Channel Tunnel fire has been estimated at US$313M. The cost to the Italian economy from the three year closure of the Mont Blanc tunnel has been estimated to be US$2.5bn. The cost of upgrading itself was US$300M.
Review of European tunnel safety
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By GlobalDataSince the Mont Blanc and Tauern incidents in 1999, several countries (including Austria, France, Germany and Switzerland) have been revising their design guidelines in an attempt to improve the safety in their tunnels. The recent tunnel fires have highlighted a number of important safety issues that require attention including (a) increased traffic flow, especially the number of large vehicles carrying dangerous goods; (b) inappropriate user behaviour; (c) poor management; (d) tunnel layout; (e) ventilation; (f) spalling of concrete; (g) cross border harmonisation.
A survey of 25 European tunnels by European automobile clubs, carried out in 1999-2000, indicated that a third were assessed as “critical” (six tunnels) or “sub-standard” (two), nine were assessed as “good”. No tunnel received the “very good” ratingà. The results and the manner in which the survey was carried out led to considerable discussion. Operators found it hard to accept that the ADAC, as an outsider, should examine their structures. The tunnel survey by the German automobile club was, in some cases, entirely rejectedà and the methodology criticised on the basis that it was “additive” rather than “holistic”. Safety features were given ratings and weightings to produce an overall assessment of “safety”. However, this did not take into consideration the interaction between the different safety features, following a critical path from fire development to the response of people and structure, whereby the failure of just one critical feature could result in serious fatalities. This shortcoming is being addressed by the UPTUN project (see Figure 3).
European Directive
Following a White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 published in September 2001á, the European Commission published a proposal in December 2002â, for a Directive of the European Parliament and the Council, on minimum safety requirements for tunnels in the Trans-European Road Network. It notes that the main causes of road accidents are incorrect behaviour of road users, inadequate installations on the road network, vehicles with technical defects and other faults as well as problems with loads. The proposal sets two main objectives for optimal level of safety in road tunnels: (a) The prevention of critical events that endanger human life, the environment and tunnel installations, and (b) The reduction of possible consequences of events such as accidents and fires; to enable people to rescue themselves, allow immediate intervention of road users, ensure efficient action by emergency services, protect the environment and limit material damage.
It points out that the first 10-15 minutes of an event are crucial in terms of self-rescue and limiting damage. The Directive will apply to tunnels longer than 500m in the Trans-European Road Network. The proposal notes that users can usually escape from tunnels shorter than 500m on their own in approximately 5-10 minutes, and that within this time, hot smoke emitted by the fire is naturally stratified, which makes escape possible. It adds that tunnels shorter than 500m do not generally need to be equipped with mechanical ventilation systems. It considers four main factors influencing the level of safety: infrastructure; operation; vehicles; and road users. Requirements aimed at reinforcing safety in road tunnels will be established for each group.
A cost/benefit study was carried out by ICF Consulting Ltd. The three main costs (to be borne by Member States) are: (i) refurbishment (majority of costs); (ii) costs of traffic delay caused by the refurbishment (quarter of costs); and (iii) operational costs. The total cost of the proposal is estimated to range from US$2.6bn (where certain modifications in the tunnel structure are replaced by alternative measures, such as traffic restrictions) to US$6.3bn (assuming all existing tunnels will be adapted to meet the provision of new tunnels). The estimated benefits include: direct benefits of accidents avoided/contained (cost now is about US$210M per year); indirect benefits to the economy from avoidance of tunnel closures (about US$300-450M per year for Italy alone); indirect potential economic benefits (e.g. transport, competitiveness).
A two-stage approach is considered. In the short to medium term the proposed legislation will set minimum standards to rapidly guarantee a high level of safety for road users of road tunnels. Medium and long term solutions are also suggested that include a shift in transport modes, mainly from road to rail.
This proposal raises a number of concerns. It could be too prescriptive and thus may be unable to incorporate developments and innovations, such as those that will arise from the 5th and 6th Framework projects. In addition, it appears that the evaluation of the overall safety level of a tunnel could be conducted in the manner of the ADAC approach, rather than holistically as proposed by UPTUN. Another European Directive is being prepared for rail tunnels.
5th Framework projects
EU action as part of the 5th Framework Research Programme includes the funding of seven multinational projects (some involving more than 40 organisations). Five of the seven projects, funded by the European Commission, were initiated in 2001. UPTUN was initiated in 2002 and SafeT in 2003. It should be noted that two of these projects will be producing guidelines. In addition to the creation of the consultable databases, the FIT project will use this knowledge to produce guidelines on safety issues related to actual fires in tunnels. The harmonised European guidelines to be produced by the SafeT project will cover other tunnel safety issues including fire prevention and causes. SafeT will also devote special attention to management and cross-border issues.
Fire in Tunnels
Fire in Tunnels (FIT), launched in March 2001, is a four year “Thematic Network” of 33 partners from 12 European countries, coordinated by BBRI (Belgium). It aims to establish and develop European networking and optimise efforts on fire safety in tunnels. FIT forms an important first stage in the European wider action with the gathering of existing information and comprises of three technical work-packages related to six consultable databases.The work packages include a state-of-the-art on design fires, guidelines on fire safe design and definition of best practices for fire response management. The six consultable databases on tunnel and fire are available on line. FIT members, and the registered corresponding members, are invited to consult – and provide input to – the databases on research projects, test sites, numerical models, equipment, fire accidents and tunnel upgrade activities.
Durable and Reliable Tunnel Structures
DARTS (Durable and Reliable Tunnel Structures) is a three year project, also launched in March 2001, undertaken by eight European partners co-ordinated by COWI (Denmark) through six technical work-packages. It was prompted by serious cost overruns, often exceeding 100%, and construction delays of recent tunnels, combined with the lack of supportive tools for life cycle tunnel optimisation. DARTS aims at developing, for each individual case, operational methods and supporting tools for the choice of cost-optimal tunnel type and construction procedures regarding environmental conditions, technical qualities, safety precautions and long service life. It is a cradle-to-grave approach, ensuring up-front decision making.
DARTS is primarily concerned with new tunnels, but develops decision procedures applicable also to upgrading existing tunnels. Fire issues (12% of total effort) are directly co-ordinated with the achievements of FIT and represent a key element of the hazards considered, which to a lesser extent also includes explosions, water inundation and earthquakes.
Safe Tunnel
‘Safe Tunnel’ (Innovative systems and frameworks for enhancing of traffic safety in road tunnels) is a three year project of nine partners initiated in September 2001 and co-ordinated by Centro Ricerche FIAT (Italy) Its main objective is to contribute to the reduction of the number of accidents in road tunnels by preventive safety measures. The main focus is to achieve a dramatic decrease of the “fire accidents”. The basic ideas are to avoid the access into the tunnel to those vehicles with detected or imminent on-board anomalies and to introduce measures to achieve the control of the speed of the vehicles inside tunnel.
SIRTAKI
‘SIRTAKI’ stands for Safety Improvement in Road and rail Tunnels using Advanced information technologies and Knowledge Intensive decision support models. This three year project, initiated in September 2001, is undertaken by a consortium of 12 European partners, co-ordinated by ETRA (Spain). It aims at developing an advanced tunnel management system that specifically tackles safety issues and emergencies and is fully integrated in the overall network management. The proposed system will be evaluated in several road and rail tunnel sites.
SIRTAKI plans to provide innovations in four main aspects of tunnel management and emergencies: the prevention of conflictive situations and emergencies; supporting tunnel managers; integrated management within the transport network; improvements to sensors and surveillance. The Decision Support System (DSS) is one of the main components of SIRTAKI. Basically, the DSS provides a smart aid between, on the one hand, the crisis manager and the real time information needed to analyse the situation and, on the other, between the crisis manager and the emergency response means.
Virtual Fires
‘Virtual Fires’ (Virtual Real Time Emergency Simulator) is a three year project with eight partners from five European countries, initiated in November 2001 and co-ordinated by the Institute for Structural Analysis (Austria). The aim of the project is to develop a simulator that allows the training of fire fighters in the efficient mitigation of fires in a tunnel, using a computer generated virtual environment. This will be a low-cost and environmentally friendly alternative to real fire fighting exercises involving burning fuel in a disused tunnel. The simulator can also be used to test the fire safety of a tunnel and the influence of mitigating measures (ventilation, fire suppression etc.) on it’s fire safety level. End users will include tunnel operators, designers and government regulatory authorities.
Upgrading existing Tunnels
‘UPTUN’ (UPgrading TUNnels) stands for “Cost-effective, sustainable and innovative upgrading methods for fire safety in existing tunnels”. It is a four year research and development project with 41 partners from 13 different EU Member States and from three associated countries. Additional organisations are involved in an Advisory Board headed by CETU (France). UPTUN is by far the largest of the tunnel safety projects funded by the EU under the 5th Framework programme. It was initiated in September 2002 and is co-ordinated by TNO (Netherlands) and ENEA (Italy).
UPTUN’s primary objectives are: (a) to develop, validate and promote innovative, sustainable and low-cost (preventive, detecting, monitoring and mitigating) measures, where appropriate, to limit the probability and consequences of fires in existing tunnels; and (b) to develop and promote a holistic evaluating and upgrading procedure for existing tunnels, based on the innovative measures developed in objective ‘a’ to allow owners, stakeholders, designers and emergency teams to evaluate and upgrade human and structural safety levels.
The work is divided into seven technical work-packages (see Figure 2). The first four work-packages aim to develop new measures to reduce the probabilities, and to mitigate the consequences, of fires in tunnels. The fifth and sixth work-packages mainly focus on the development and verification of the innovative holistic upgrading procedure. The last work-package is devoted to the promotion and dissemination of the results.
The technical issues considered in UPTUN include fire suppression by means of the use of water mist technology and isolation of the fire (i.e. compartmentation) by means of inflatable tunnel plugs to starve the fire from oxygen and separate smoke from people. Work package 5 involves the innovative development of the holistic evaluation and upgrading model (Figure 3) employing artificial intelligence, heat and mass flow simulation, human behavioural modelling, structural response modelling, and socio-economic impact assessment, using Nobel Prize winning methodology.
Safety in Tunnels
Another European thematic network called ‘SafeT’ (Safety in Tunnels), coordinated by TNO, will start in 2003 for a duration of three years. Its objectives will include the drafting of harmonised European guidelines for tunnel safety drawing upon the knowledge accumulated and developed in the other EU funded projects but with a focus on the management and cross-border issues. The contributions of local authorities, fire brigades and other organisations will be of primary importance in this project.
6th Framework project
A large European consortium submitted in March 2003 an application to the EU for the setting-up, as part of the 6th Framework programme, of a strong and coherent Network of Excellence (NoE) on Fire in Tunnels (‘SafeGuard’), coordinated by STUVA, which in the future will become self-financing and extending to other hazards and enclosures (see Figure 4). The intention is also to develop a much needed Full-Scale European Test Facility. If approved, this NoE will overcome the serious fragmentation and overlapping of European efforts in this field and build upon the achievements of the 5th Framework in a sustainable long-lasting manner.
Related Files
Fig 4 – Outline of the proposed SafeGuard ‘Network of Excellence’ development, as part of the 6th Framework
Fig 3 – Outline of the UPTUN fire safety evaluation and upgrade procedure
Fig 2 – UPTUN project overview: Roles of individual item workpackages (WP1-4) and global workpackages (WP0, WP5-7) superimposed by the author upon a fire in tunnel tenability diagram supplied by Ove Arup
Fig 1 – Timetable of the seven 5th Framework, EU funded projects, on tunnel fire and safety
