How to operate safely a tunnel: Definition of Minimum Operating Requirements

Published: 19 April, 2010

Road tunnels are becoming more and more complex to operate, due to important increase of safety provisions in new or renewed tunnels in recent years: installation of Automatic Incident Detection systems based on video analysis, installation of complex ventilation systems operated with support of wind velocity measurements from anemometers, etc.

A state-of-the-art tunnel is assumed to be operated safely when all equipments / organisation is functioning as expected. However, what if:
• a breakdown/failure is observed on a given equipment: jet fan, terminal computer for supervision, emergency telephone(s), power supply(ies), etc.;
• an unexpected event occurs in organisation for maintenance, supervision or intervention in case of an emergency: an operator for supervision is missing, etc.

This paper presents reflections and practical experience in addressing the following question: under what conditions a given tunnel can be considered as safely operated?

File: 534-537_How to operate safely.pdf (382k)

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