New Challenges in Tunnel Fire Safety

Abstract

The interest in tunnel fire safety and security has increased enormously in the last decade. I have personally been involved in research studies on tunnels since 1993, when the EUREKA 499 tests were carried out. Much has changed in the field since then, especially compared to our basic field understanding from that time and in light of the subsequent applications of engineering correlations for tunnel fire safety. Today, there are two important books available that provide a good, state-of-the-art overview of the field of tunnel fire safety: The Handbook of Tunnel Fire Safety [1], edited by Alan Beard and Richard Carvel, and the recently published Tunnel Fire Dynamics [2], written by Haukur Ingason, Ying Zhen Li, and Anders Lo¨nnermark. Since EUREKA 499, a vast number of scientific articles on tunnel fire safety has been published, and the number is increasing continuously. It is important to maintain and strengthen our existing field knowledge and to present new, up-to-date research, when available.The nine papers presented herein constitute a sound basis for future research in the field of tunnel fire safety, and it is my hope that this issue will offer an effective overview of the variety of research topics that are critical and relevant in the field. Much focus is on rolling stocks and their related design problems. There are also papers on fixed firefighting systems, construction, emergency response, explosions, and ventilation. The first paper addresses development of design fires-always a painstaking, delicate matter, yet each tunnel project's most crucial and essential task, as design fires determine how safe the tunnel's future users will be [3]. There are numerous methods available for administering a design fire; the method presented herein, which is focused on train carriages, is complicated but accurate, and considers many of the basic engineering parameters required for the setting of a design fire. The second paper considers a new method for risk assessment in rail tunnels; risk assessment is a process crucial in every tunnel project for determining actual risk [4]. The third paper considers one of the most challenging research areas in the field of underground fire safety: modelling and testing of users during evacuation in underground systems [5]. There is a significant shortage of data to apply to existing models, and the correlation between model structure and actual-scale experiments has been lacking. This paper narrows that gap and provides readers with new data for metro systems, which are actually among the most challenging fire safety designs today. The same could be said of firefighting

Tunnel Security Management Based on Association Rule Mining under Hadoop Platform

“…erefore, more advanced analytical techniques are needed to extract the safety risk characteristics of railway tunnels [6][7][8]. In addition, we need to nd some subtle relationships hidden between a large amount of tunnel safety-related data, so as to provide strong decision support for the daily maintenance and safety inspection of railway tunnels [9,10].…”

Discussing the Need to Manage Uncertainty Relating to Users in Road Tunnel Fire Risk Assessment

“…Although tunnels do provide roads with numerous advantages, they also include significant risks for the operation of road networks. In particular, the type of accidents that can result in fire are the biggest threats [7]. The reasons are the impact of these accidents not only on the tunnel system itself but also on the rest road network.…”